Lemmy should just go its own way and forget about cake day and karma farming, and instead reward original content, until reddit starts copying Lemmy

Cake day is cute

65

Yes. I mean, just because your stupid neighbour celebrates their birthday, it doesn't mean you would stop celebrating your birthday just to be different.

58
- Counterpoint: birthdays (and cake days, and many anniversaries) are a pointless celebration.
  
  Payton Oswalt had a pretty good plan on that: https://youtu.be/sbJs-Ul1QFo
  
  -3

The official lemmy interfaces don't track those things.

53

The official lemmy interfaces don't track those things.

Cake Days are shown in the default web interface. Like for this user who posted further down in this thread:

31

IMO the issue is not copying cherry picked good features from Reddit, but to indiscriminately copy features because "since Reddit has it, Lemmy got to have it too", without paying attention if they actually benefit the Threadiverse.

44

Bots are one thing like that. Communities could have features built in that was not possible on Reddit since admins are part of the community now.

13
- Good catch on bots - they're a great example of that, since the underlying idea (less busy work) is 100% worth copying but not the implementation.
  
  In fact IMO Lemmy bots are already a bit too similar to Reddit bots in a bunch of undesirable ways. For example they're created and kept as "pseudo-users", instead of tools associated with a (human) user in their profile.
  
  15

Tldr I don't think this is an unpopular opinion.

Cake day?

I have no idea what day I first started using lemmy, or when I made an account. I'm okay not knowing.

As for "karma", do any instances track total karma, or just per-comment? Honestly I don't give a shit if my comments do well or not, I don't live for other people's amusement.

As for other people, I can't speak for them, but I haven't seen anyone crying for lemmy to be more like reddit.

_{___}

39

Mostly I like the ways it's not like reddit, but I miss 'disable inbox replies'

11
- Drop controversial comment
  
  "Disable comment replies"
  
  8
- Man, I'd love thrm to add that to lemmy, sometimes I live up to my username and would like to ignore the comments.
  
  4
Cake day is the day / aniversary of registering on the site.

3

I didn’t think karma existed on Lemmy? Or maybe it was removed in ann update?

30

~~It exists, your total just isn’t visible to anyone but admins.~~

4
- Users' aggregate post and comment score has been entirely removed from the Lemmy API (as of version 0.19.0 if I remember correctly). It is not easily accessible to anyone, including admins. You could write a script to sum a user's aggregate score.
  
  36
- its completely public via non-lemmy systems https://moist.catsweat.com/u/@LibertyLizard@slrpnk.net
  
  10
- Well, in that your upvote total and ratio can be calculated, at least. Does it actually do anything, or can it do anything, like it did on reddit? Subs having minimum karma thresholds, that sort of thing? If not, it's truly meaningless and can be safely ignored by everyone.
  
  That's what I do.
  
  4

Not sure if I should downvote this popular opinion in the unpopular opinion sub or upvote it, for more people to see this wholesome take.

23

I had to look at the community rules to see what to do as well:

If you agree that the opinion is unpopular give it an arrow up. If it's something that's widely accepted, give it an arrow down.

What is the protocol for when I don’t have enough data to assess how popular an opinion is and I want to spread and support it to make it more popular of an opinion?

7
- welp, i decided not to do anything 😅
  
  7

how do we reward original content?

19

Toothpaste.

25

How would Lemmy reward original content?

16

Hamburgers or tacos.

14
- Bacon or we riot.
  
  6
- You'd cause a bloody revolution in the eco.br instance if you don't offer coxinha as an alternative reward.
  
  4
- Hamberders.
  
  3
When something is posted, automatically search to see if that exact thing has been posted before. If it has, then deduct a percent of votes, with the percent increasing each time that exact thing has been posted before. Say, if it's been posted once before, then you deduct 1%, if it's been posted twice, then 2%, and so forth. Feel free to adjust this math in a way that makes the most sense.

If something is legitimately excellent, or if enough people have forgotten it to upvote the repost, then reposts can still make their way to the frontpage.

Otherwise, repeat posts will naturally wither away, while encouraging original content.

1
- Upvotes and downvotes don't mean as much here.
  
  1

I literally do not and have never cared about votes or awards.

16

Happy cake day tho, lol

19
- Lol it actually is. Boost for Lemmy doesn't show it, had to go on his profile to see the date
  
  7
Enjoy Lemmy Gold, kind stranger!

9
- The beluga prosciuttoes at 8pm
  
  3

Or we all hope Reddit continues as it is, not as a hotbed of original content like it was 10+ years ago, but as a place to rehost content found on other sites, and watch it fade into obscurity so better-run platforms can fill the void

15

All social media is just reposting from other social media sites.

6
- Ouroboros
  
  6

Let's get rid of cake day but there is already no karma on Lemmy meaning no general upvote count. It will be much harder to find anything if we get rid of a voting system and the one we have is probably the most transparent and easy-to-understand one 2 opposite force and to possibility to choose neighter.

13

Strongly agreed.

I'm reminded of the scene in Groundhog Day in which they have that one day that just unfolds naturally and is so wonderful, and then the next time through, the Bill Murray character tries to duplicate it, and it's just awful and cringey.

Lemmy, given the chance, will (continue to) develop its own norms and memes and traditions, and be that much better for it. Just trying to duplicate Reddit here is not only doomed to failure, but cringey.

13

The reverse can also happen, though. Many of the features of Reddit are there because they are good, so if we just strive to be different for the sake of being different that will end up awful too.

5
- They may have been good in the beginning, but they got fucking hammered to death instantly and became tired tropes in less than a week.
  
  I vote that lemmy diverges and does its own thing so we can beat our own tropes to death almost instantly
  
  3
- Who said anything about striving to be different?
  
  That's at least as cringey as striving to be the same, and generally even more so.
  
  3

I think it's important for developers to stay active within the community and try to understand how the community uses the tools available and what additions or changes are desired or would be beneficial. Obviously people disagree about what those things are at times, but I think with patience and empathy we can iterate ideas and get to better places.

I see people posting more and more news on Lemmy and I enjoy that, but it does make the need for tools that fight disinformation. Maybe that's the source-checker bot (feels like a stopgap to me) or maybe that's a combination of new ui and api features that draw from Twitter's community fact-checking and how some instances are use bias-checkers.

Moderation tools are always in need of improvement too.

Hey I even think silly shit like emoji reactions and awards have a place for people that prefer less verbal forms of interaction but still want nuance or whimsy.

12

The only thing I miss here are active niche communities. Other than that, it's so much better than Spez's data vacuuming service.

11

I would like some geographic filtering, or at least sorting, do I can see local stuff before all the USA election posts.

7

I think it would be cool if you couldn't see the upvote/downvote score until you voted

7

I just disable vote counts from being displayed. I don't care how popular or unpopular some comment is.

2
Yeah thatd be neat. Also I didn't realize it when I created this account but your server can disable the downvote, both for giving and receiving.

At first I really (really) hated it but now my Lemmy experience is so much nicer because I never have to worry about being down voted for trivial reasons or downvote brigades or anything. Its just so much nicer. I almost understand why Facebook never put in a thumbs down now.

2

Did Reddit invent cake days? I thought that was a Digg thing.

7

The only thing that would even make sense to bring imo is a leveling system of sorts, straight from the forums of old.

6

I suggested such a thing a couple days ago on asklemmy and was roundly shut down. Badges, levels, whatever that would denote longevity and “service” to the communities.

Nope.

3

Is there a place where you can see your useless internet points on lemmy. They are only needed to show the general opinion of the thread. It a superior system to reddits bot fueled lies.

5

Tap your username or check your profile. Comments/posts are there.

1
- I wasn't talking about previous comments or posts.
  
  1

So far it seems like people develop around the ideas laid down by social media giants. Rather than replicating, it would be good to see incorporation of healthier options (e.g. time monitoring displayed in app, stopping endless scrolling and keeping to page by page scrolling, avoiding prioritising low effort content (by showing older posts in people's feeds as well and displaying more that prompts comments rather than just upvotes, etc). Don't know how they would design to minimise the hivemind....there's still plenty of that.

3

I call my real life birthday "cake day." Because I hate my birthday. But I do like cake.

3

Hell, I don't even remember my birth but cakes, I do remember

1

And I bet that won't long

1

point farming will exist wherever points are distributed. Lemmy would need to radically change the voting method to achieve that.

1

Disagree, cake days are only a fun “easter egg”, and karma doesn’t really exist on Lemmy as far as I can tell.

0