2y ago

What other less-toxic system could work instead of karma?

Hey! Thanks to the whole Reddit mess, I’ve discovered the fediverse and its increidible wonders and I’m lovin’ it :D

I’ve seen another post about karma, and after reading the comments, I can see there is a strong opinion against it (which I do share). I’d love to hear your opinions, what other method/s would you guys implement? If any ofc

28 comments

That real question is, what problem are we trying to solve? Then we can go from there.
- Good point, take my:
  handshake, pat on the back, slightly too long hug point thingy.
- In wondering about that myself. What is the problem?
  
  Individual users having some sort of reputation is useful. I always thought it was handy on Reddit to be able to distinguish people I happened to disagree with from actual trolls. The latter always had pretty high negative karma scores, and it was good to know that there was no point in engaging with them.
What we have right now in Lemmy strikes the current balance IMO. Individual comments are upvoted/downvoted. But no cumulative score.
- which is the right thing, judge the opinion not the person
I agree that it might get toxic at one point, but I'd much rather see extra preventive measures to stop repost bots, karma farming and so on rather than removing points altogether. Maybe it also helps to see karma breakdown by community: say you see someone answering a technical question on a specialised community - it would be of little to no relevance there that they might have 10000 points on r/funny or r/aww - I'd much rather see their points on that specific community.
Web of trust. The biggest thing missing from most attempts to build social networks so far. A few sites did very weak versions, like Slashdot/s friend/foe/fan/freak rating system.
Let me subscribe, upvote, downvote, filter, etc specific content. Let me trust (or negative-trust) other users (think of it like "friend" or "block", in simple terms)
Then, and this is the key... let me apply filters based on the sub/up/down/filter/etc actions of the people I trust, and the people they trust, etc, with diminishing returns as it gets farther away and based on how much people trust each other.
Finally, when I see problematic content, let me see the chain of trust that exposed me to it. If I trust you and you trust a Nazi, I may or may not spend time trying to convince you to un-trust that person, but if you fail or refuse then I can un-trust you to get Nazi(s) out of my feed.
Score the posts, not the individuals. Attaching imaginary points to any kind of activity instantly turns it into a competition.
Instead, any scoring should focus on actual content, which is basically what the up/down vote is.
What about the same system, but it shows both upvotes and downvotes?
- I’d prefer that. 2600 up and 2500 down is really different than 105 up and 5 down
  
  Tbf you can probably tell the actual numbers by looking at the % reddit shows in the corner, but that's not very intuitive
I still firmly believe one of the worst things to happen to the internet, besides pop-up ads, is up and down votes. Nothing exposes a misanthrope quicker than forcing them to comment instead of passively downvoting everything they see. Which makes it easier to remove them from the party.
- I think you've got the wrong idea about misanthropes. But who cares? You're only interested in excluding people who disagree with you and reinforcing an echo chamber for yourself.
  You're just as much a source of toxicity in these forums as those you wish you could ban from them.
I think the awards system from Reddit could work, just without it being monetized. The awards let you see how people feel about the comment, and it’s more than just good/bad, like/dislike.
- Another user mentioned something like that! I like the idea :D
  
  I think it’s less braindead than the +/- system, which I think increases our engagement & makes us treat this place more like an irl_space
User scores are bad. Up/downvotes are bad.
The whole point of them was to create a flow of content with minimum human intervention. That’s a huge goal and The Dream if you’re making money off social media. If you’re not making money off social media then it’s not doing you any good.
Abolish karma, abolish comment and post scores.
The problem isn't the points, it's the people. Everything starts to suck beyond some critical mass.

28 comments