No karma!

I worked for a couple of years in the Tech Startup space not long ago and in little companies like that everybody does kinda work with everybody else, so I did work together with the Digital Marketing side too.

Anchored in what I learned there I have a feeling that Karma is often used as a sort of buy-in and gamification strategy.

On the first part (not sure if buy-in is the right expression but stay with me here), it gives people something that feels like a personal asset: you've put time into making posts and you got this "stuff" from it, which intellectually is just a number by emotionally is something that is "yours" and you got by putting time and work into it, and this "stuff" is non-transferable so you're less likely to leave because you don't want to loose it.

On the second part it's all part of a game loop to incentivise posting: you post, people read it, they like it, so you get karma, which feels good so you post some more to get more karma in turn resulting in more of the pleasure of recognition and that "score" going up. Whilst it's really up-votes that do most of the "pleasure of social recognition" side, karma amps that by adding a score and all the game-like elements of it, such as competitiveness between "players". (Also note that this whole game-loop is why many social media sites don't have or removed down-votes - with only up-votes pretty much everybody no matter how shitty their content gets at least some of that sweet positive social-feedback, which feels good so they'll make more posts so there's more content on the site which attracts more people spending more time there, yielding more eyeball-hours for advertisers hence more $$$).

Karma does make sense in a purelly expert context to allow people to recognize those with somewhat more expertise (though it really doesn't measure that with a correlation of 1, as people get karma for sounding right, which is not the same as knowing what they're talking about), but in a system like in Reddit it doesn't work like that because one can gain far more karma from just saying something which is "popular" and "aligns with the groupthink" in some political-heavy sub or making interesting posts in the "relax" subs (say, posting jokes, memes, cat-pics) that you can by providing genuinelly knowledgeable expert advice on expert subs, as do it with a lot less effort, so people's karma doesn't really work well at showing expertise, unless, maybe, if karma was per-sub.

Absolutely not, karma was one of the worst parts of reddit

Been on Reddit for years, honestly never cared for karma. It's just there for me. I barely look at my own or other people's profile page anyway.

No. There would be so many reposts and low effort posts and those annoying ''funny'' comments.

NO

Lemmy actually already has something called "reputation". You have -3 sorry.

No.

But if it did I'd prefer if it was divided into categories of some kind. Like, people often downvote content when they disagree, even if the content itself is good quality, or they might be posting legitimately funny/topical meme/jokes in a community where joking is discouraged.

It might be interesting to have a few options for votes, like agree/disagree, high-quality/low-quality, appropriate-forum/inappropriate-forum, or something that that effect.

So I could vote a post that is well-written and on-topic but that I disagree with as disagree, high-quality, appropriate. Or I could vote a joke reply that is on-topic and funny, but in a serious-only community as no-vote, high-quality, inappropriate.

Honestly, that would probably be a disaster in practice, but it might at least be a fun disaster!

In any case, I agree with others who suggest that vote tallies should be attached to posts, not users, at least publicly. There might be some utility to allowing mods or admins to see tallies for users.

Oh, and it seems to me that whatever system is used Lemmy-wide should provide some freedom for instances to handle user/post karma in the ways that they prefer and in a way that works well with federation.

Nope, it's fine the way it is right now. if its on the front page good. if not people gotta earn there upvotes. Karma whoreing makes it a competion for everyone. Everyone will be out for themselves and it will turn into reddit.

I couldn't really see the point at Reddit (seemed like an idea someone has once early on that got stuck) and I don't think it'd be that helpful here. If we are looking for ways to differentiate ourselves from Reddit, then that'd be one.

Let the quality of someone's account be measured by the quality of the posts they make.

I don't want Karma, but I'd really like to get notifications when a post or comment of mine hits certain vote thresholds, e.g. 5/10/50/100/... upvotes/downvotes. I think this would help me get a feel of how my posts are received. Currently, if a post of mine gets 50 upvotes, I most likely won't ever notice unless I actively monitor all of my posts.

But with the notification I'd get a nice dopamine rush as reward for posting good content ;)

We don't need people Karma Whoring.

Karma is a great indicator of the popularity of what you're posting to help you post more excepted things. There's no reason for us to bring the reddit pissing contest here.

Karma is just a drug for Reddit addicts. Just let each post stand on its own regardless of who posts it. We don't need that extra layer of crap. I always disliked that.

kbin has karma. i actually really like that i don't see my karma here. on reddit i became too focused on it, and so wasn't my True self.

Anyone here old enough to remember slashdot? I liked their karma system. The maximum a post could get was +5, and I think the minimum was -1. I don't quite recall the details, but it was pretty effective. People didn't shamelessly karma farm because there wasn't any point. If you are at +5 there's nowhere else to go.

I'm a bit confused on this. We do need a way to filter spammers and bot accounts but karma didn't completely work on reddit.

I'd rather not have karma at all; or at the very least they should try something different instead of just copying what reddit did.

Some servers already decided to disable either the system completely or just the downvotes.

The only instance I can think of Karma being beneficial is in highly specific forums where user reputation could be an important metric for new users, or those seeking info. Very limited.

When it gets to something as general as this it just becomes popularity/feel-good points. Not necessarily evil, but no real benefit. Upvotes are still a thing for that social media dopamine hit.

Yes, because it can be an indicator of reputation of someone.

No, because of the ease of getting it, as well as it can be a basis of someone's ego.

Actually, any number that is attached to person has the same set of pros and cons, except of the ease, persumably. This includes SO's rep system, Reddit's karma system, YouTube subscriber/view/video count, Twitter followers/post count, etc. Adding karma system to Lemmy may have its side effects, but even there isn't one, it may not matter since Lemmy has post and comments counts.

EDIT: In the end, when I'm reading Reddit or Lemmy, I gave no attention to the karma, and instead the vote count of the post/comment itself. Call me ignorant, but whatevs.

No. We don't need to make Reddit again. Let's do something else.

No, because karma's a bitch.

I don’t think it necessarily needs karma like Reddit, but I think a reputation system of some sort is going to be required for open federation to remain viable as federated systems grow. Just looking at account age and post history isn’t good enough if the bad actor owns a server and wants to put some effort into spamming or harassing people.

Upvotes and downvotes are nice in that they suggest that I'm not posting or commenting into the void.

I'm not overly interested in my grand total.

Karma ruined Reddit. Let's not repeat the same mistake here.

No

Well, karma itself isnt a bad idea in my opinion, but making it visible to others isnt. Making it hidden will stop the karmafarming.

No. I think the numbers game lowers the level of discourse.

Karma was always so irrelevant for me, I won't miss it.

No.

I thought it did already. what are these voting buttons

No

No.

I think Karma was responsible for people always trying to make a witty comment and made them way to attached to their account. I don't think that it's a healthy system an can live good without it.

Please, don't