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arakhis_ @feddit.org

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

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?

24 comments

  • Dude, you've been on lemmy 4 days.

    Maybe try getting into the vibe here before suggesting stuff that nobody really liked on reddit in the first place

  • I personally never saw the point of the karma system on Reddit. Just never used it in any way beyond some communities requiring X comments (with positive karma) before you can post.

    I think you'll find many people on Lemmy are opposed the karma system.

  • Huh, I didn't even realize that there is no Reddit-like karma system. Well, Lemmy still tracks your total number of posts and comments, so there are those.

    Maybe they just want to eliminate having to fetch yet another total, though I see that it does filter by your highest upvotes if you sort by any "Top" category. So someone may end up developing a third-party karma tracker, which may make its way into some Lemmy apps.

    Activity is the bottom line for my personal draw to post and comment. I don't care what the vote count is if my submissions are at least being read and replied to; isn't that what matters? If the comments only have the OP's vote, who cares as long as they're insightful? For me, karma is not a measurement of helpfulness, and may in some cases even denote spamminess.

    I have no idea of where to find the Lemmy devs' thoughts because general opinion across the fediverse has been training me to avoid Lemmy.ml lol.

    Now that I think about it, why don't you use the biography space in your profile for this?

    shows people via my profile how much I could help by posting/commenting.

    • I have no idea of where to find the Lemmy devs' thoughts because general opinion across the fediverse has been training me to avoid Lemmy.ml lol.

      why is that?

      • I've read multiple reports here and on Reddit of them banning users with communism-critical opinions.

      • It is commonly said that they are tankies and frequently censor comments criticising China or Russia.

    • Your overall score is being tracked, it's just hidden. Some frontends, like Mbin, let's you see it I believe. You can also see the score if you're an instance admin. Early on some 3rd party apps displayed it (Connect did I'm fairly sure), but I don't know whether they've decided to comply with the intent of the devs or the devs made the score actually inaccessible, but I don't think any of them show it anymore.

      Regardless, it's very much a conscious decision by the devs to keep this score out of view. It's a frequently debated topic here and while many around these parts are vehemently against any form of Karma I can see that it has its uses - like identifying trolls for example. But the cost of gamification with all the karma farming it leads to may well be too steep.

      • Mbin isn't a "front end", it's a completely different bit of software that uses the same protocol for communicating between instances, and is thus cross-compatible.

        The devs did indeed make the score inaccessible. It's no longer returned via the API.

      • Interesting. Well, I mean, Beehaw doesn't even allow downvotes at all (I left it due to its restriction on user-made communities, not because of that), so this isn't too bad. Troll accounts shouldn't be too big of an issue because I think they'd leave a downvoted comment trail that should only take marginally more time to spot than a total, but maybe a "Controversial user" stamp might be helpful (lol).

        The question is threshold on helpfulness. Again, I think if this issue is that big of a deal to you... capitalize off your bio! You're not using it so far!

      • Mbin isn't a "front end", it's a completely different bit of software that uses the same protocol for communicating between instances, and is thus cross-compatible.

        The devs did indeed make the score inaccessible. It's no longer returned via the API.

      • But the cost of gamification with all the karma farming it leads to may well be too steep.

        Let's say Lemmy becomes the biggest platform for forum like exchange. Will a karma system change agenda/shill issues since we still have a upvote based community system where bots could influence certain opinions?

        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..

  • Karma is not a good system.

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

24 comments