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arakhis_ @feddit.org

Thoughts on new Lemmy features to boost intent for posting more?

cross-posted from: https://feddit.org/post/9451996

Thoughts on features to boost intent for posting more?

Like a karma system of that other forum website.

I currently miss a point system to motivate me that shows people via my profile how much I could help by posting/commenting. There's no system to create such feedback currently on Lemmy.

Are there statements by the creators of this platform about that?

26 comments

  • Seeing a lot of upvotes on a post or comment feels nice, seeing that mass social approval of whatever my contribution was. But I also never had any interest in engaging in low-effort posts to get that same reward. I also think the Lemmy hivemind disapproves of low-effort posts like that so such behavior would not be rewarded.

    I do wonder what motivated people who made low-effort posts for karma, and why I don't seem to see it here even though we share an upvote/downvote system. Identifying that might help us at least figure out what not to do so that we do not set up a system that encourages that behavior. We do still clearly have the ability to see upvotes on posts and comments.

    It is also possible I'm seeing low-effort posts but they are not rewarded as heavily and I mentally dismiss it as "just someone trying to get any activity going on the Fediverse at all." I sometimes just post a link and let it be because it's relevant to the community, I thought it was cool, and I'd like to see some Fediverse activity there but don't really have anything original to say. It's possible the low-effort posts are not rewarded not because the Lemmy hivemind disapproves of low effort but because they just don't see it in the tiny little community I posted in that receives maybe an average of 3 upvotes per post.

    For what it's worth, I'm not using "Lemmy hivemind" in a derogatory fashion here, I just mean it as "the general sentiment of most Lemmy users".

  • Karma is not a good system.

    I do agree however that additional features to encourage posting and engagement would be good for Lemmy.

  • The Alexandrite front end for Lemmy has a feature called "Vibe Check" that shows a user's positive or negative score in each community they post within. It is a nice check for spotting trolls quickly, or even if a person "trolls" in one community but not others. If you scroll down their profile past around the first ~30 comments/posts (Alexandrite is infinite scrolling), it will score the vibe check on however many comments/posts are loaded which is usually 100 loaded when past this ~30 mark.

    • Wow, Alexandrite is really good now! I wish I could try that Vibe Check tool, but it only appears when logged in, and I'm an Mbin user.

  • IDK, if you want to post, you post. I don't feel that encouragement is really needed.

  • I don't miss karma being a thing (and people focusing on growing it by pleasing as many as possible, instead of focusing on content) but I'm also past the age of getting good/bad grades for doing my homework or for participating in class ;)

    I'm pretty sure introducing karma will boost low effort reddit-like posts. And those don't need any encouragement, imho.

    • low effort reddit-like posts

      Let's say Lemmy becomes the biggest platform for forum like exchange. Will a lack in karma system change low effort issues since we still have a upvote based community systems? Where bots could influence certain opinions that show up on your feed

      My current impressions:

      Art communities sadly seem so lackluster - "like why share" is the vibe Im getting. I just want a strong unique selling point (USP) compared to reddit, because lemmy could replace (not saying it should copy) reddit, like the good parts, and show how reddit is in essence flawed like x and meta for example.

      Or communities showing political/global media of what people recorded (i.e. some protest in istanbul right now, or serbia using sonic weaponry at a demonstration), even more regional like r/de always gives you a very complete feeling slice of german articles out there and its always rated so regularly. You can see like the top 5 publications of the day and then discuss it/see how people feel about certain things, that you wouldnt think about just reading the article.

      I just fear the personal motivation for users might be too low for such feed activity, and often I notive like 10 people upvoting and not a single comment, so more reactionary - maybe its just total users tho what im missing..

  • Some instances disable downvotes. This is an important thing to consider for anything related to post/comment scores.

    Edit: I also fear that a karma system would encourage just sticking with the overall Lemmy, instance or community mainstream, more than it is now already the case with up/downvotes and how they affect the sorting of posts/comments.

26 comments