As a somewhat frequent poster myself, I kind of miss the meaningless number going up. It lets me track how many people have seen the stuff I posted and cared enough to react
No I don’t. It’s just a dumb internet toy and I’m glad Lemmy and the Fediverse treats it like that. It used to annoy the fuck out of me with Reddit, where they tie your account to it. Too low or negative? Good luck posting anywhere or tripping the spam filter bot that thinks you’re an evader so you get banned over it.
People have this idea in their heads that the higher their karma is, the more righteous they are and that they can’t think or say wrong. When, based on experience, a lot of the time that people with high karma counts happen to be from the most insufferable bastard human beings I ever come across.
No. It encourages people to game the system instead of honestly engaging.
In a number-go-up kind of sense, yeah - it’s inherently gamification of social media and it is fun for some of our brains. However, I also think that karma or any other kind of “engagement accumulation” turns social media from a place of discussion into a competition for attention, where you’re more incentivized to post solely for upvotes. Only a small minority takes posting seriously like this I admit it, but it does make the experience worse for everyone.
That’s not to say the mindset doesn’t exist without karma, only that it gets amplified.
Some apps and front ends support showing your post and comment “karma”. Eternity, for example
I feel about the same. I don’t particularly care about it, but it’s nice to know how many I helped. It was intentionally removed, I believe so it doesn’t incentivise karma farms. If karma exists it will be used and there will be reasons to farm it.
Nothing a quick Postgres query can’t fix though :p
Not only do I not miss it, I’m relieved that it’s not here.
No. I don’t even like visible vote count. I think it hurts us more than it helps.
No, it just existed to block people from posting.
I get where you’re coming from. You could revisit the contributions you’ve made and the messages and replies you’ve received. The difference is that those ARE meaningful and hopefully in a good way. I think Reddit actively pushes the concept of karma because it’s an great engagement metric and they love that.
My opinion is that Reddit is captured and driven to push engagement for advertising revenue at the expense of meaningful interaction. Lemmy is a platform where that engagement metric is only intrinsic to the individual. People are here because they want to have meaningful conversations? Maybe I’m dreaming
If you’re dreaming, we’re sharing the same dream.
I don’t even have a down vote button anymore and I low-key like it.
No.
No, and I wish votes didn’t even exist here.
Votes are the only reason making a social platform social.
Juat look at Youtube comments, Instagram, Facebook, etc. None have downvotes.
Its somehow more social to see opinions on votes besides text.
I think voting is completely unnecessary, and is a sort of “participation placebo” for the lazy but opinionated.
Its more about reflecting on your own comment or post.
Here is a good post about this topic https://lemmy.ml/post/29375485
I find a good amount of opinions in that post highly idealized and conceptual, but not really the end experience. Nevertheless, thank you for sharing the link.
I’d be more open to a voting system that rewards actual contribution. For example, a user is allotted (rewarded?) a certain number of votes for every post and every comment they make. The content creators and discussion participants drive the platform.
I’m sure a whole new set of problems would arise, but I feel it’d be a fresh experience, with less armchair warriors.
Nobody needs to vote, but if most people do vote, makes it easier for everyone to find good content.
The best content on this platform often has less than 10 votes. The most? The sociopolitical headline mill communities.
If certain people feel that’s the good content, that’s their prerogative. I don’t.
Now you’re conflating quality with popularity.
A popularity metric is still handy since there is no objective quality metric.
That’s a fair point.
I’m glad it’s not a thing here because as a “positive” incentive I feel like it drives some users to vapid karma farming over actually interesting and new content. That said, I occasionally miss it when there’s some unpleasant commenter douchenozzeling all over a thread and it’s an easy way to see if someone is always an unpleasant ass or if they’re having a bad day and otherwise make valuable contributions to Lemmy.
True. But we can just ban unpleasant douchenozzles
Worse solution
