Can someone explain to me how kbins reputation system works?

Currently :

"Boost" adds reputation. It's a kind of retweet.
"Downvote" removes reputation
"Upvote" does nothing. (edit : for reputation)

This is because previously the upvote was boost, they were switched around to be similar to other fediverse systems.

Dev mentioned in another thread that the reputation system should be changed to have up/down count instead of boost/down. But they have a lot to do right now so it might not be the most pressing issue...

Ah, okay that does make a lot of sense. Poor ernest must be getting swarmed by idiots like me asking for QOL changes. Thanks for the info.
- -6 wrt ego hits was funny. Go check out mine.
Boost should be removed entirely since it's nonsense to boost most things. E.g. even if I liked your comment here, why would I want to "retweet" that (and retweet into what even)? I just want to tell you that I liked it... with an upvote.
- I think it's like for compatability with the microblogging side of the fediverse; so when someone on Mastodon follows you they can see what you've been "retweeting".
- As @HidingCat said it's to increase compatibility with the other app. If I'm following your Kbin account from my Mastodon one, when you boost something I'll see it pop up on my feed. I'd be in favour of keeping it but changing the label to something like "boost to fediverse" or "share with followers", or even just "share".
- For now I use it to save things, since there is no save function.
  
  So it could probably be replaced by that.
  
  But I think it's also here for compatibility with Mastodon...
"Upvote" does nothing

Not exactly - it's technically a "favorite" button. Since I learned exactly what you typed out, I've been using it as a way to save posts I want to read later. However it is correct that it does nothing for reputation.
- It does, AFAIK affect the post ranking i.e. order of posts. So it's got that going for it - which is nice.
I'm playing with different fediverse at the moment as well as this one. That one doesn't do down votes. Didn't know it at the time when I signed up. The idea is appealing. The idea is that if you disagree with a comment, then you should interact and leave your own viewpoint. An anonymous, unthoughtful down vote does nothing that leads to a discussion. In reddit I'd see something down voted to oblivion because of a name brand mentioned but no discussion as to why people disagreed.

Thus far all of the fediverse has been positive comments 90% of the time.
- That actually makes sense. Legit the reddit style voting system was often just mindless dopamine button pressing where just interacting in the group vote was enough to give you yours but not really encouraging anything beyond that. Iv been sitting here kinda missing it on squabble and now im more ok without.
- I hear what you're saying, but as a counterpoint: when I read something really fucking stupid (like someone just trolling and posting racial slurs) the appropriate response is actually to downvote & move on without engaging. Do not feed the trolls.
- Without downvotes, you end up with Twitter-tier garbage discourse and arguments because there's no way for the community to vote to remove an idiot's platform, just clap-backs and ratios.
  
  The up/downvote system is far from perfect, but I'd really rather not lose it as the fediverse draws more people in. I would much rather have my opinion hidden on occasion because I pissed off a wasp hive than have the content I consume be filled with toxic bait that can only be hidden if a moderator gets involved.
I don't like this, I feel like upvotes should add to reputation, not boosts. But that's just my opinion.
- It's also the opinion of the devs. The fact that it's boosts and not upvotes is a bug, they'll get to fixing it, it's just not top priority right at the moment (since "reputation" doesn't actually do anything and is just a small number tucked away on your profile).
Thank you so much. I was not understanding what boost was, and have therefore been ignoring it.
But they have a lot to do right now so it might not be the most pressing issue...

Actually I think this one is pretty high priority. People don't like seeing negative numbers next to their names. If there is ONE thing that can drive former redditors en masse off a platform, it is an impossibility to accrue karma because the system is (quite literally) broken (as in, it's incorrectly implemented).

There's one argument that we don't want anyone who could be driven away by such a thing as negative karma score, but....I disagree. More users & more content is a good thing. More serotonin for contributing more content is a good thing.
@albatros

@TooL

Oh that’s incredibly stupid.
- That's just the current state of the software, not the intended state of the software. There's a bug right now, reputation's not supposed to be calculated that way. It'll get fixed, there's just rather a lot of higher-priority stuff in flight at the moment.

It's like talking to the police: the more you talk, the more you incriminate yourself. Never talk to the police.

Well i'm screwed then.. Cause i'm the worst kind of ex redditor. After like 10 years on that site I had maybe 2k post karma... 150k comment karma lol.
A modification of this is used when giving a deposition. You want to answer the question without giving any more information than necessary. If they ask about time you say it was after 9 in the morning. You don't say it was 9:15 because you'd just gotten your coffee and had checked your watch.
- I learned this during audits -- Always try to say the Minimum Correct Thing. Be honest, be precise with your language, and only answer questions that are asked.

From what I understand, currently it works like this: boost = +1, downvote = -1, and upvotes do not feed into reputation.

And a boost is... what exactly? I feel like that system is going to lead to pretty much everyone being close to 0 or negative. Especially if downvotes federate between instances, as I don't believe boost is even an option for lemmy instances is it?
- @TooL
  
  Upvote = I like this thread/post
  Boost = everyone following me, here is a thing I think you should see
  
  -ish. That's my understanding at the moment anyway
  
  @skepickle
- I don't know, I will boost your comment and see what happens... I hope it doesn't open a webcam discussion where we see each others, that would be awkward.
  
  Edit: what is this madness? I see a +1 but with no way to remove it! It's forever. Be cautious!
Even boosting your own comments seems to increase your reputation
- Like this?
- Yeah, currently nothing stops a person from flooding self-boosted low-effort posts to rapidly raise their (apparent) reputation.
  
  A single user can counter that 1-for-1 by downvoting every instance of it happening, but as "reduces" are visible the system gamer can retaliate in kind.
  
  Two users (or one with two burner e-mails) in fact working together can currently destroy any user's points quite quickly beyond their ability to counter with self-boosts even if they wanted to.
  
  Irrelevant, as reputation doesn't seem to do anything and we all know the system currently is flawed, but one feels we should not be able to affect our own, nor that of other users past a certain amount.
- Unexpected Kbin W
- Yes. In Facebook you could always upvote yourself. I used to always do it when putting the word out about volunteer opportunities where I worked. Not sure if it truly helped but it felt good when the post began with a +2. Not sure if that's something that still can happen there. I've not used FB for much in the past 6 years.

My reputation is 25 but I don’t really know why.

Seems like you posted or commented something that got boosted/"retweeted" at least 25 times then.

Good question. I'm -6, too (and should be positive).

Maybe it's hardcoded? 😁

I've heard it's going to be revised so I'm not paying attention to it.

Also, I have a very fragile ego and my -6 reputation hurts a bit.

Good news! At the moment, reputation points are strictly calculated based on live data. In other words, if you delete the downvoted content, the negative points disappear.

Mine’s negative too, I just assumed I made some kind of unseen, powerful enemy.

You got +2 as of the timing of this comment, yay!

I like the idea of spending upvotes to downvote

The reputation system is awful. It's actually enough to get me to stop using the platform, because - unless you dig in to my comment history and see the upvotes - it looks like more people disagree with me than not.

Logically I know it's untrue (and it wouldn't matter if it were), but reddit gamified both the attempt to gain popularity AND the dissemination of it. Because of that, huge numbers of people treat internet points as an actual indication of a person's value. I left reddit a long time ago, and that was one of the major reasons.

I don't want to have my thoughts on a topic discounted because of a clerical error coupled with too much emphasis on counterfeit updoots. I especially don't want to become an outcast because of a flood of downvotes from people who can't tell the difference between "someone they disagree with" and "a bad person". We're building a new community, we should take this opportunity to build a better one.

Why do you care so much for an ethereal reputation system that has no meaningful consequences to you in actual reality?
- It's almost as if I just described why, in the post you're replying to...
Reputation will vary by which instance you're on because it's just a calculation of actions people have made, and those counts vary based on who subscribed to whom and when. If you're on instance B and instance A and C are talking to you, but defederated from each other, you could be +100 when looking from A and -100 when looking from C. So the score will be increasingly meaningless-looking the more you are federated.
- Seems like a great reason to remove it entirely.

I think the best strategy would be to have a system that shows either both your number of up and down votes, or a ratio of them, rather than just the sum of them like Reddit (sort of) does.

I feel like it'd be a lot harder to fake a good ratio with an older account, than it would be to just manipulate a total score by exploiting lurkers by reposting generic content over and over.

I feel like the reputation should probably just be hidden, unsure what the point of having it be visible if it's not a meaningful number.

I'll give ya a boost

I think the best strategy would be to have a system that shows either both your number of up and down votes, or a ratio of them, rather than just the sum of them like Reddit (sort of) does.

I feel like it'd be a lot harder to fake a good ratio with an older account, than it would be to just manipulate a total score by exploiting lurkers by reposting generic content over and over.

Thanks for the post. I don't usually look at things like that but last I noticed mine at -6 and it was after a rather akward free speech posting (im sorta getting tired advocating for stuff im not into on free speech grounds actually but I stick by my prinicples.) so I thought I just pissed folks off and got downvoted. I was legitamately thinking of going to another thing for my start point on federation because I was feeling the group might be to closed off for me. This makes me feel better and I learned a lot from people explaining to you in the comments.