There’s some misinformation floating around regarding Lemmy not having a karma system. While many have discovered otherwise, this is for those who may not have.
While it’s not exposed in the Lemmy default user interface, Lemmy does have a fully functional karma system and it is visible in third party clients such as WefWef and Memmy.
Do with that what you will.
I know I’m in the minority here, but I think the karma system has value and I’d like to see us keep it. I did time as a moderator on a fairly busy subreddit, and requiring accounts to be >30 days old and have >100 or so karma saved us a lot of work. E.g., it made ban evasion a little harder to do, and reduced brigading.
It also helped to keep folks fairly civil and promoted considering perspective when posting, which I think is valuable.
With that said, I’d LOVE to allow communities to disable down votes… it’s a missing feature in reddit, and if you are trying to promote discussion of a divisive topic, or to actively suppress an echo chamber, I think down votes are counter productive.
Counter-point: Requirements such as these were the reason repost/copy-paste bots were getting so rampant on Reddit.
Kinda, but not really… if you are a user who has had your account for more than 5 minutes and you’re not a troll, odds are you never run into those rules.
The repost / copy paste bots were mostly to build a believable strawman that could be sold for astroturfing / “viral marketing”, etc.
Requiring accounts with X days or X karma lead to subs where people would literally post just to get upvotes and the creation of bot accounts.
Should probably be a per-server karma system. Or else anyone could create their own instance and auto-give themselves enough karma to be “trustworthy” and set their account date.
This is already possible on a per-server basis. Beehaw already does this.
It would be interesting to make it a per-community feature though.
Definitely seems like that would end with defederating that server
Good luck detecting it
Upvote-only system is bullshit and you also know it. How else would you motivate user to post a quality content? Karma should also exist for this exact reason.
I don’t want yet-another-facebook-or-youtube here. 🤷
People that post quality content don’t tend to care about internet points. People that care about internet points won’t bother to collect them via posting quality content.
Downvote systems can also discourage open discussion, as too many people can’t help themselves from downvoting dissenting views. Communities end up one sided hiveminds.
Maybe there is a middle ground, perhaps downvotes could be rationed instead of outright disabled.
I think downvote rationing could work, possibly. It is only an issue for subs that are focused on discussion of divisive topics… downvotes work fine for most communities
Being left on one would be the equivalent of being downvoted. What’s the difference? Downvotws often just serves as a fuck you, and makes people feel like they’re being attacked.
Not every sub is for “quality content”, some subs are intended for debate / dialogue between people that disagree with each other, and use the downvote button to mean “disagree” … which means if you are coming for a quality dialogue, you tend to only see a quality monologue unless the user base is split 50/50 on the topic, which is rare.
Min account age / min karma are horrible for the new user experience though.
You sign up to say something only to find out you can’t.
Yer, great way to kill momentum of a new community that is built around discussion.
You had my approval until: I’d LOVE to allow communities to disable down votes…
No… Just No…
yeah, like if we pick a certain flair, down votes will be disabled to prevent echo chamber for a certain conversation
So no free and open discussion then? Only approved group think will be allowed?
I understand the benifits of what you are asking, but those are the very things that lead Reddit to what it is now.
How does requiring a minimum account age cause group think?
It was more of a response to the minimum account karma.
Account age is reasonable enough, after the service has grown a bit more.
However, if people start getting banned for the wrong reasons and have to create new accounts to be able to have discussion. It does create a barrier for that discussion to take place.
What would be good or bad reasons?
It is seriously difficult to have negative account karma on reddit unless you are an outright troll.
Requiring basic levels of karma or age is not “group think.”
requiring basic levels of karma most certainly is. You have to say the right things first to get the group approval before you can contribute.
Again, I disagree. You can say the “right things,” certainly, or you can say “neutral things.” Really anything short of overt hostility would be acceptable.
I think that is too idealistic. It could very easily go into a downward spiral that a community could never get out of. It happens already on several subreddits already. You may not have experienced it, but I can say it for certain happens. There have even been scifi series written about it that have taken the concept to the extreme.
I’m familiar with some of the subreddits, but I believe you’re taking the spiral too steeply and too quickly.
The “don’t be a dick” philosophy will get you more than enough karma to comment on whatever subreddit you want to participate in, outside of some super niche ones.
If you have controversial opinions just post them on controversial subs as well. A large part of “the right things” depends on the “right community”
That is entirely correct.
But not ‘being a dick’ is far too subjective in a global village… The world does not beat to one drum.
I have to stand on eggshells with my language around USamericans as an example.
While I hear what you’re saying, it’s really not as complicated as you’re making it out to be.
Sorry, what? That’s the opposite of my point. I think most subs benefit from outright trolling and off topic nonsense being prohibited, but my issue is that downvotes promote group think, and on a discussion sub, you should be able to limit or remove them.
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Voat had a system where you only had ten downvotes a day. Kept people in check
I don’t think so dude.