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So I've seen quite a few comments from people regarding the lack of karma so far in Lemmy/The Fediverse, and I was just wondering if because of the nature of how it works if karma is even possible? Although I wouldn't mind too much about it existing, people have made good points about how much it helps moderation and keeps the trolls at bay, so I feel it's a very nice too to have. Thanks in advance for the responses!
This is a support question and would be better off in [email protected].
Nah this is good here, it's about discussing a possible evolution of Lemmy
Karma was one of the worst things about Reddit imo all the farming and low effort posts, let's not repeat things again
Exactly. Started as a fun thing, "Oh look how much I contribute" and over time was abused to the point of bot farms selling accounts with high karma. Not to mention trolls trying to get the lowest karma they could.
This is one of the primary differences between us and kbin. They have a karma system, we don't. Otherwise the two systems are pretty fundamentally similar.
So, people who wish that have their option. Those that do not, come here. As a result of this basic sorting of the market, you will find that most of us Lemmings are not in favor of it.
This has come up before and my opinion is still the same. I don’t want karma because it lowers the level of discourse. People posting the same running jokes, etc for the karma.
I also don’t know how this would work on a federated platform. Comments and votes are sometimes in a state of flux as data is synced among instances. Raises the question as to what the “real” totals are.
Reddit fuzzes the karma numbers anyway, so the Lemmy votes are kind of "naturally" fuzzy due to the nature of federation
Even aside from moderation and being able to tell if a user is "legit" or not, I do like to see how my contributions to the community are being received. I still check my profile frequently to see how my recent comments and posts are being voted on. Numbers go up trigger dopamine release, brrrrrrrr.
However, I also fully recognize the problems it creates with making karma "hoarding" the end goal and promoting shitposts/content stealing instead of meaningful contributions.
I would support the idea of a karma/vote total that was visible only to the user it belongs to (and/or admins) while being not displayed publicly. It covers the desire to see one's "community performance" without turning it into an E-Peen measuring contest. And of course, instances could disable it entirely on a case by case basis. Since it wouldn't be public, the potential for manipulation by abusing custom instances and such to collect votes is basically pointless.
Already exists, just not in the Lemmy web interface. Most of the mobile apps will show total post and comment points on a person’s profile page.