I spent a fair amount of time on reddit over something around 15 years (I think) and not once did I happen upon someone with -100 karma that didn’t earn it by being a troll. I found it very useful to be able to weed out people who weren’t actually commenting to further the conversation, but derail it. Is that the type of thing you’re talking about not wanting?
People are confusing (probably due to intentional prompting by those trolls trying to have bystanders fight their battles for them) the very real problem on Reddit that if you chase karma there were benefits to be had in terms of credibility and reach of your messaging and so whatever entities might benefit from such would tend to fill the space over in Reddit with content like that. Realistically that doesn’t change the most common content much as it really comes down to the sort of thing people will upvote but it did make it a bit worse. That’s being confused with some notion that somehow anyone who wasn’t chasing karma was entirely ignored. That just isn’t true. You might not be the absolute center of attention unless you’ve either post or said something especially worthwhile but so what?
I had a fair amount of karma over there and it didn’t seem to grant me any special privileges that I could see. The issue for lemmy, is that the data is there, being federated. Maybe all the major platforms can be convinced to cap the top and the bottom, to prevent “karma whores”. Say, a range from 100 to -100?
Frequently though people with -1 to -10 karma on a comment were just saying something that went against the hive or even dared to question it.
As an experiment sometimes I’d say something slightly against the tide, nothing even provocative. It would get downvoted into the basement and I’d see it start slowly then it would get pigpiled on. Then I’d post the same comment, say, a few hours later and it would be strongly upvoted. The same pattern of slowly getting upvoted and then rapidly increasing.
I spent a fair amount of time on reddit over something around 15 years (I think) and not once did I happen upon someone with -100 karma that didn’t earn it by being a troll. I found it very useful to be able to weed out people who weren’t actually commenting to further the conversation, but derail it. Is that the type of thing you’re talking about not wanting?
People are confusing (probably due to intentional prompting by those trolls trying to have bystanders fight their battles for them) the very real problem on Reddit that if you chase karma there were benefits to be had in terms of credibility and reach of your messaging and so whatever entities might benefit from such would tend to fill the space over in Reddit with content like that. Realistically that doesn’t change the most common content much as it really comes down to the sort of thing people will upvote but it did make it a bit worse. That’s being confused with some notion that somehow anyone who wasn’t chasing karma was entirely ignored. That just isn’t true. You might not be the absolute center of attention unless you’ve either post or said something especially worthwhile but so what?
I had a fair amount of karma over there and it didn’t seem to grant me any special privileges that I could see. The issue for lemmy, is that the data is there, being federated. Maybe all the major platforms can be convinced to cap the top and the bottom, to prevent “karma whores”. Say, a range from 100 to -100?
Frequently though people with -1 to -10 karma on a comment were just saying something that went against the hive or even dared to question it.
As an experiment sometimes I’d say something slightly against the tide, nothing even provocative. It would get downvoted into the basement and I’d see it start slowly then it would get pigpiled on. Then I’d post the same comment, say, a few hours later and it would be strongly upvoted. The same pattern of slowly getting upvoted and then rapidly increasing.
Yeah, definitely-- I’m going through a bit of that myself right now, but I don’t think that makes a karma system worthless.