Another Reddit refugee here,
I think we’re all familiar with the Karma system on Reddit. Do you think Lemmy should have something similar? Because I can see cases for and against it.
For: a way to tracking quality contributions by a user, quantifying reputation. Useful to keep new accounts from spamming communities.
Against: Often not a useful metric, can be botted or otherwise unearned (see u/spez), maybe we should have something else?
What do you all think?
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We absolutely need a trust system. I don’t know if it should be a Karma system.
Spam-bots are taking up hundreds-of-thousands of usernames across the federation. It is clear that they cannot be trusted.
ChatGPT and GPT4 has made it easier for bots to automatically write comments as well, a few groups with money can make realistic-looking accounts with different posting patterns / writing styles automatically.
The problem of spam and automated-comments will only get harder moving forward. I don’t know if Karma is a good enough system for us, but its better than nothing.
What’s preventing GPT-based bots to earn karma by writing real-looking comments?
The future of the internet really seems like a dark one…
But programs are tasked by their creators, and if their long-term goal is spam, then we know what their tactics are.
A GPT-bot designed to have good discussions with the community would get upvotes and karma (at least, to the best extent that these programs can do). A GPT-bot designed to spam the community with links or shill a product would probably get downvotes.
So distinguishing between good-bots and bad-bots is still karma / reputation management.
No. There would be so many reposts and low effort posts and those annoying ‘‘funny’’ comments.
Definitely no. In addition to the downsides you mentioned, I feel like the redditor’s desire for karma is what causes these hiveminds/echo chambers and cliché comments that are so typical of many subreddits.
Edit: Thank you so much for the gold kind stranger!
NO
No, karma turned Reddit into a hive mind. Everyone knew what everyone expected in each community and would push people to stay in line in order to not get downvoted.
This
We don’t need people Karma Whoring.
Karma is a great indicator of the popularity of what you’re posting to help you post more excepted things. There’s no reason for us to bring the reddit pissing contest here.
Why? They are useless and some people go crazy about them.
Why should we copy the bad if we are trying to build something better
Upvotes and downvotes are nice in that they suggest that I’m not posting or commenting into the void.
I’m not overly interested in my grand total.
I say no, it was ripe for abuse, with karma farming bots which get sold to entities looking to influence and astroturf a platform.
I don’t care either way. I can live without it.
No need. New users can be kept in check simply by being new, as in age of account. Active users can determined by their history.
Adding a point system inherently makes it a game.
Unless its like Whose Line is it Anyway, where the “karma” points shown are random for each user, each day. That could be funny.
I say don’t bother - if it can be gamed by bots, it will. Even Slashdot’s mod/meta-mod system could be gamed by the current generation of bots, because a lot of comments / reposts look fine out of context.
If you don’t have karma there’s nothing to farm, and that means fewer karma farming bots and better overall quality of content.
Karma made Reddit toxic and limited the amount of conversing people did on the site. Here we can have conversations without worrying about down votes and Karma.
