Lack of Overall Karma Count (Less Pressure?)
Lack of Overall Karma Count (Less Pressure?)
There are upvotes for posts and upvotes for comments but on lemmy you're not reminded of an overall running karma total. The lack of this count makes me feel like there's a lot less pressure for every post or comment to be an absolute banger, witty, smart or something along those lines.
On reddit I would lurk a lot because I was none of those things but I feel like I can engage more now.
What do you think? Do you think it's a good thing, a bad thing or perhaps do you feel indifferent?
I generally think that not having a karma count is overall beneficial. Based on all the negative outcomes of the variations we've seen in other services (Facebook's like, Twitter's follower count and blue check, Reddit's karma), I feel like overall it degenerates into negative pressure that causes people to choose clout and popularity over genuine, meaningful engagement.
That being said, I am not a member of a marginalized community and have not experienced the positive effects it can have, so I have no expertise in this area. Take my words above with that in mind. Using something like karma to keep out trolls and protect community members is a very valid positive use case. Using it not as an indicator of clout but rather an indication of safety or empathy (general "niceness") is, I think, a beneficial use of a karma-like tracker. There are good reasons to have a karma count.
Perhaps a better implementation of "karma" might be a metric not based solely on likes or upvotes, but rather something that is conferred by each individual community, and shared by like-minded communities. That way, the karma would be qualified in various spheres of communities as opposed to a site-wide popularity contest. That would make it difficult for people in a troll forum, who get lots of karma from like-minded trolls, to use that karma to get into other communities where their karma would be considered "bad karma". If I, as a mod, looked at a prospective user and saw that all their karma came from communities that are antithetical to mine, I could assume they'd probably not be a good fit for my sub.
If there is to be the idea of karma here, I hope that it would be more nuanced than just "this person knows how to get people to engage with them". I personally am not wanting karma to become a thing here, at least the way it was implemented on Reddit. I don't believe that the majority of people are capable of using it primarily for beneficial reasons as it currently works.
I find that I've had more meaningful engagement within decetralised spaces than the centralised ones. Sadly the corpos the type of engagement doesn't seem to matter too much as long as it's engagement on their site and not someone else's. I felt that same pressure to be honest.
You're right about the good use cases, it's nice within the marginalised communities / subreddits but outside of them it's not so great. Sometimes you want to engage in other communities in peace as well so I guess it comes down to moderation but I understand the karma points is a barrier to entry for trolls.
Community level point counts might not be too bad tbh because like you said, it would be a way of stopping people from using other communties that might not have the best intentions to farm karma so they're not in minus numbers. To be honest, a count did span across a site it would be a nice feature to have a breakdown as to what communities that positive and negative karma comes from..
I completely get where you're coming from, in that having overall karma counts can lead to unhealthy behaviors, like viewing it as a competition, indicator of status, or game score you have to maximize, which in turn can lead to karma farming or lurking or low quality but high-reward posting, but I do also think karma can serve useful purposes as well.
As a trans person online, I have to deal with trolls and sea lioning fairly often, and one of the most useful and accurate ways to identify a troll who isn't worth engaging with is a low karma account. It means that it's likely either an alt account that they use purely because they know they are doing something that's harmful, or that they just spend all of their time hurting people and stirring controversy and so can't even find any place on the internet that will actually like them and reward them with karma as a consequence. That's why a lot of subreddits is especially ones for marginalized people have a minimum-karma requirement.
I'm not sure which matters more, but I think the behaviors that the existence of an overall karma count serves to foster our typically far less pernicious than the ones it serves to highlight and help people avoid.
Regarding the online abuse in regards to being trans, same here. I had this problem on twitter GC / TERF pileons so shinigami eyes was quite useful to have. When trolls learn you're trans it's like low hanging fruit to them so I get what you mean with low karma accounts being blocked from engaging in a community
Lemmy is in it's early days so they may actually add an overall count with a similar safety feature in the future or additional safety features for communities to use. If the Lemmy devs don't create something to help with this then it's possible that someone might write a bot to help with moderation as automod and the likes were quite popular on Reddit. I'm speaking from my own experiences here but I find that over time as a mod or admin who is a marginalised person, you tend to become friends with mods and admins from other marginalised communities within the fediverse and get a headsup on who's doing the damage and where before the abuse is aimed at the rest of the community. The fediverse is currently mostly reliant on these teams for user safety so for now, connecting with other communities and talking to each other is one of the best tools we have until more features are developed.
Thank you for your response btw, it has made me think about what Lemmy might need so communities can keep each othe safe. Some Lemmy instances will tolerate abuse like that and leave it upto the mods to govern their own communities but we've never been a fan of anti-LGBTQIA+ hate or TERFs here at DATATERM or any of the other fedi spaces run by @revengeday@[email protected] .
I completely understand your sentiment. On platforms like Reddit, where there is a visible karma system that accumulates from both posts and comments, there can be a certain pressure to constantly strive for popular or highly upvoted content. This can create a sense of competition and make individuals feel like they need to constantly deliver exceptional or witty contributions to gain recognition...
In contrast, Lemmy's approach of not displaying an overall running karma total does create a more relaxed and less pressurized environment. Without a visible count, the focus shifts more towards meaningful discussions and engaging with the community rather than constantly worrying about the number of upvotes or downvotes received :)
I'm hoping it'll make people more likely to engage in discussions where they might not have on reddit. Of course thre's no pressure to engage but I'm optimistic that some people might give it a go and the ones who did previously, I hope they can relax in this space. :D
Karma system is a waste of resources. It did nothing but create the illusion of faux-popularity of which later on became used as a way to filter engagement by many. Gross addition to reddit IMO, but some liked it.
The wildest, most stupid posts would get karma'd/upvotes.. and the most intelligent thoughts or provocative opinions would get ignored.
Many sub's karma engagement was manipulated by bots too
For a while, not sure if it is still working.. you could post anything in /r/FreeKarma4U/ and you'd be karma blessed.
I actually had no idea there was a subreddit for free karma but there's a subreddit for something haha.