YSK: Lemmy DOES have a karma system

Muddybulldog@mylemmy.win to You Should Know@lemmy.world – 746 points –

There's some misinformation floating around regarding Lemmy not having a karma system. While many have discovered otherwise, this is for those who may not have.

While it's not exposed in the Lemmy default user interface, Lemmy does have a fully functional karma system and it is visible in third party clients such as WefWef and Memmy.

Do with that what you will.

https://join-lemmy.org/api/interfaces/PersonAggregates.html

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Upvotes are useful for determining what people like and dislike so you can sort posts and comments

Account karma is for narcissists to masturbate about how loved they are

Upvotes are useful for determining what people like and dislike so you can sort posts and comments

> Things people like get more upvotes
> Upvotes give you karma
> Therefore posting things people like gives you more karma

Not sure if this was an argument for karma, but it sounds like an argument for avoiding contraversy and trying to fit in This is why everyone on Reddit appears to have the same opinion. I much prefer a diversity of opinions, and no penalty for speaking one's mind (while treating each other with decency).

Karma makes sense, in theory, but in practice, it just punishes anyone who diverges from the herd.

My biggest problem with karma is that it bakes in a reason for bots to repost everyone else's posts. It also encourages people to sell their high karma accounts (god knows why someone would want to buy one)

it just punishes anyone who diverges from the herd

So you're saying people get less karma for posts that diverge from the herd. That can only mean those posts get fewer upvotes, which means they rank lower

In other words, the sort-by-votes system makes uncontroversial posts more likely to be seen, while the karma system makes those same posts more likely to exist. My point, therefore, is that both systems have a similar overall effect on the website, and that the result of their conjunction is only that the effect is amplified

Agreed. As others have pointed out, voting helps to elevate higher quality posts (even if it doesn't always work that way), but karma takes that imperfect process to its ridiculous extreme.