As a somewhat frequent poster myself, I kind of miss the meaningless number going up. It lets me track how many people have seen the stuff I posted and cared enough to react
In a number-go-up kind of sense, yeah - it’s inherently gamification of social media and it is fun for some of our brains. However, I also think that karma or any other kind of “engagement accumulation” turns social media from a place of discussion into a competition for attention, where you’re more incentivized to post solely for upvotes. Only a small minority takes posting seriously like this I admit it, but it does make the experience worse for everyone.
That’s not to say the mindset doesn’t exist without karma, only that it gets amplified.
No. It encourages people to game the system instead of honestly engaging.
I’m glad it’s not a thing here because as a “positive” incentive I feel like it drives some users to vapid karma farming over actually interesting and new content. That said, I occasionally miss it when there’s some unpleasant commenter douchenozzeling all over a thread and it’s an easy way to see if someone is always an unpleasant ass or if they’re having a bad day and otherwise make valuable contributions to Lemmy.
True. But we can just ban unpleasant douchenozzles
Worse solution
I feel about the same. I don’t particularly care about it, but it’s nice to know how many I helped. It was intentionally removed, I believe so it doesn’t incentivise karma farms. If karma exists it will be used and there will be reasons to farm it.
Nothing a quick Postgres query can’t fix though :p
I don’t even have a down vote button anymore and I low-key like it.
Noooo
Some apps and front ends support showing your post and comment “karma”. Eternity, for example
Kinda. At least there’s per post karma
Kind of, and it was a good way to keep trolls and spammers out of sensitive communities, but unfortunately with bots and astroturfing existing nowadays, karma incentives terrible behavior.
No I don’t. It’s just a dumb internet toy and I’m glad Lemmy and the Fediverse treats it like that. It used to annoy the fuck out of me with Reddit, where they tie your account to it. Too low or negative? Good luck posting anywhere or tripping the spam filter bot that thinks you’re an evader so you get banned over it.
People have this idea in their heads that the higher their karma is, the more righteous they are and that they can’t think or say wrong. When, based on experience, a lot of the time that people with high karma counts happen to be from the most insufferable bastard human beings I ever come across.
No. I don’t even like visible vote count. I think it hurts us more than it helps.
Not only do I not miss it, I’m relieved that it’s not here.
No, it just existed to block people from posting.
No.
Nope. I was on reddit for like 14 years and I couldn’t tell you what my karma was because I cared so little about it. I paid a little attention to up votes and that’s about it.
