They are talking about karma as a thing you could collect, point totals for all posts added together displayed on your profile. Not the voting mechanism itself.
Lemmy also has this and everyone's point totals are visible from the API. If you're not seeing it, that's because your client is hiding it, not because it doesn't exist.
The nice thing is though, it's different for every server and from every server, so unless you follow a convention to say the user's homeserver vote total is the definitive amount, then there's no true karma.
My beehaw account is a great example. I made some comments on Lemmy world before it defederated. World and shitjustworks users can still vote on the old comments but they won't count to my home total, and from Lemmy.world my vote total won't change for that account significantly from that point. The vote totals on this lemmy.ca account will be different from lemmy.ca, beehaw.org or lemmy.world's perspectives because the servers defederated can't see the karma I earned on each comment on the other server, while lemmy.ca can see both.
Downvotes are also disabled on beehaw, so any downvotes won't affect my total at all but could show on other servers.
Lastly, there are some servers with 40000 accounts and 3 active users (who post and comment), vote botting is feasibly a thing. Imagine if I made a Lemmy server at Rentlar.org and as the admin I made 20000 accounts who upvote me every where I post. I'd be the first user on Lemmy with 1M total votes, but would that mean anything other than I'm a somewhat tech-savvy narcissistic loser? No.
Wait why is downvoting disabled on beehaw?
because being negative isn't allowed there.
You are pretty much correct. Although the moderation is very strict, it makes for a more laid back and friendly experience.
its real laid back because there's so few people there.
Discussions with 5 friendly people are more fun to me than with 20 decent people and two jerks.
And there is 0 content so no one is going to show up. This site will fizzle out if all the admins don't start pushing to grow so that nitch communities start getting populated.
The site will fizzle out if all the admins don't start pushing to grow...
I know where you're coming from but this is a misguided take, imo.
Servers like Lemmy.ca, beehaw.org,have stuck around just fine for over a year with less than 30 people actively posting. When I joined in March this year, All/New was the only way you could get a refreshed set of stories more than once a day. But it was fine like that too, imo.
So Lemmy servers can totally survive without the need to grow for growth's sake. This mindset that says growth at all costs is what turns websites into shitholes like Twitter and Reddit, and reminds me too much of the hunger for infinite unsustainable growth commanded by capitalism.
if there is not a large population then there will be 0 small subs with interesting content and people will not use this platform. social media sites are successful by being a complete experience for as many users as possible. right now i can't spend any time on this site to talk about any video game or media franchise at all. there is virtually 0 content, discussion, or news about that. its all memes and drama because posting and upvoting memes is easy content, but actually supporting users interests is hard. the only way this platform takes off from here is if some major influence is brought here inorganically because none of the admins seem to know fuck all about running a social media site.
Sounds kinda boring actually.
That's totally valid and you don't have to visit Beehaw if that kind of thing isn't for you.
Lemmy also has that bro. Some clients display it and some don’t, but when I click on your name I see that you have 510 total comment score and 0 total post score.
I believe the devs have said they aren't going to make it officially visible, which is all I care about. If you want to make value judgements on people based on a number so bad that you had to find a client that shows it, more power to you.
I hadn't thought about it until just now but IDK if that number is accurate. My instance doesn't have downvotes, so if you view my profile from lemmy.one it might look like I have a higher karma than if you look from lemmy.world, I'm not sure.
Take it all wirh a grain of salt I say
It's that important tho? There had to be a reason why it isn't the norm
It wasn't important on Reddit. Even there you could only lose 15 points on any downvoted comment and you couldn't lose points for posts. Karma was just a way to measure how frequently you interacted in an additive way. It's only real utility was for mods to bar new accounts from posting without getting come karma from other places first. and Lemmy definitely needs something like that in the near future for moderation, but they have to fix the bug with the total first.
And that system was irrelevant on Reddit just like it is here. You still have a total karma number in the API, every app I have used shows it, even if it is broken right now. Only the default theme on the web page hides the number. The only people who saw value in karma are the people who farmed it and the people who bitch about the people who farmed it. Either way, making posts that get a lot of upvotes specifically to get a lot of upvotes happens here just like I does on Reddit so idk what this OP is trying to say because they're farming karma lol.
There were many subreddits that did not allow participation unless someone had a karma over a certain threshold. For many of them the threshold was pretty low, only meant to stop brand new accounts and trolls, but still.
Additionally, the "people who farmed it" often did so because a reddit account with a high karma score was literally worth money to adspammers and people running bots.
The karma system contributed to what made reddit bad.
You only lost 15 karma on any mass downvoted comment and 0 for posts. The only person who cared about people's karma was you dude.
I don't see how that addresses any of what I said. If anything this seems like this would mean the subreddits that blocked people with no karma weren't even doing it to block trolls, just new users.
I didn't care about my karma or any specific persons, I like to get into arguments about stuff and that is how you get downvoted. I just don't like the behaviour a karma system motivated.
If you're getting downvoted in an argument, guess what, that means you're bad at making arguments. And this system is exactly the same, regardless of if you can see it or not, sorting by top will still sort by the net sum of votes.
If you’re getting downvoted in an argument, guess what, that means you’re bad at making arguments.
I pretty much agree with your second sentence/point, but this is bullshit. I got so many downvotes on reddit for literal descriptions of my perceptions and experiences as a gay woman. Half the time there wasn't even a debate or argument happening. As reddit culture skewed more and more conservative, many technical and nerdy communities became actively hostile to the basic facts of my existence. Then there are all the downvotes I got for believing in human and minority rights while downthread with some bigots. My more visible posts on the same topic would be solidly upvoted, while everything below the arrow was smashed below zero because only angry little shits followed the discussion that far. I agree that the system on Lemmy isn't meaningfully different and will inevitably have the same effects, but sorting by voting over-centralizes the meta and destroys real discussion and diversity of experience and opinion. It literally only works in limited circumstances within subjects that have objectively correct answers. Anywhere else it introduces so much chaos.
I'm not saying people don't pick sides in an argument, but the point is to convince someone you're right, so if you're not doing that, you're getting downvotes meaning you're either wasting your time or making bad arguments.
I’m not saying people don’t pick sides in an argument
What I'm saying is that these weren't arguments. These were people weaponizing the voting system to keep minorities from self representing. I was downvoted below zero on a car repair sub for having runflats instead of a spare because I worked in and commuted through a bad part of town, often after midnight, where I wouldn't feel safe stopping to change my tire. They made it clear that I was unwelcome because I am a woman, because my description of this gendered experience was unacceptable subreddit content.
I’m not saying people don’t pick sides in an argument
You made yourself verry clear, he's trying to stir you
there wasn't even a debate or argument happening.
It's crazy the stories people string together to confirm their biases.
Fuck off. You're exactly the fucking same. If it didn't happen to you, it doesn't exist! Childish.
I'm not going to argue with someone about the story they tell me and how it made them feel because an individual's biased perspective is not an objective observation of how the vote system works. This isn't about you.
You've declared someone you disagree with is making things up while criticizing the debate skills and tactics of those who disagree with you. What a fucking joke. You got some peer reviewed numbers to support your position about votes and arguments? Because from where I'm sitting, this nonsensical notion that people vote rigorously based on debate acumen and never with their emotions and libido along the lines of their existing beliefs is just as much a made up story. I'm not going to find numbers for a bad faith participant like you, but we already know people vote for real, important, world changing things with their emotions. The idea that the general populace is wildly more reasonable and responsible when the votes don't matter at all is ludicrous.
I mean, generally getting downvoted in an argument is a matter of course, at least until people who you aren't arguing with chime in.
Also a lot of what you are saying doesn't really make sense to me? I feel like I'm not sure we agree what we disagree about.
Honestly the shit I got downvoted the most for was just standing up for trans people, reddit is full of transphobes.
You really don't seem to understand the mechanics of link aggregators and their comment sections. The votes are for curating content and downvoting posts that are not relevant or are poor quality is the entire point of the system. If you remove the ability to downvote bad content, you degrade the content for all the users. This is exactly why YouTube removing the dislike counter was an issue.
You already said the youtube thing.
Upvoting posts that are relevant or good quality and ignoring the rest does work though. There are several instances right now where it is working.
It works perfectly fine as a content curation method. I have no way to prove this for this, but it wouldn't surprise me if it works better.
You can't ignore bad posts when they get inflated ranking because no one can downvote them off the front page lol.
They never are on the front page. Idk why you don't get this. If I sort by new I see them but only then. If I did see a post on the front page that I don't like, obviously it is just a matter of taste. It doesn't bother me that I can't downvote it.
You really don't understand how removing the recourse from users to downvote bad content is a negative to any link agregator? Do you just never go to small subs and see less than 5 posts from the last week and not understand that someone could just flood those communities with poor content and the only recourse is for mods to ban that user who could have not even violated their rules? This is to say nothing of how bad nitch communities are already on Lemmy, if we remove the users ability to group moderate it would be even worse.
If I was moderating a small community and someone flooded it with unwanted content, I would consider that spam, which I would have against the rules.
So it would be a perfectly reasonable ban for an explicit rules violation.
They are talking about karma as a thing you could collect, point totals for all posts added together displayed on your profile. Not the voting mechanism itself.
Lemmy also has this and everyone's point totals are visible from the API. If you're not seeing it, that's because your client is hiding it, not because it doesn't exist.
The nice thing is though, it's different for every server and from every server, so unless you follow a convention to say the user's homeserver vote total is the definitive amount, then there's no true karma.
My beehaw account is a great example. I made some comments on Lemmy world before it defederated. World and shitjustworks users can still vote on the old comments but they won't count to my home total, and from Lemmy.world my vote total won't change for that account significantly from that point. The vote totals on this lemmy.ca account will be different from lemmy.ca, beehaw.org or lemmy.world's perspectives because the servers defederated can't see the karma I earned on each comment on the other server, while lemmy.ca can see both.
Downvotes are also disabled on beehaw, so any downvotes won't affect my total at all but could show on other servers.
Lastly, there are some servers with 40000 accounts and 3 active users (who post and comment), vote botting is feasibly a thing. Imagine if I made a Lemmy server at Rentlar.org and as the admin I made 20000 accounts who upvote me every where I post. I'd be the first user on Lemmy with 1M total votes, but would that mean anything other than I'm a somewhat tech-savvy narcissistic loser? No.
Wait why is downvoting disabled on beehaw?
because being negative isn't allowed there.
You are pretty much correct. Although the moderation is very strict, it makes for a more laid back and friendly experience.
its real laid back because there's so few people there.
Discussions with 5 friendly people are more fun to me than with 20 decent people and two jerks.
And there is 0 content so no one is going to show up. This site will fizzle out if all the admins don't start pushing to grow so that nitch communities start getting populated.
I know where you're coming from but this is a misguided take, imo.
Servers like Lemmy.ca, beehaw.org,have stuck around just fine for over a year with less than 30 people actively posting. When I joined in March this year, All/New was the only way you could get a refreshed set of stories more than once a day. But it was fine like that too, imo.
So Lemmy servers can totally survive without the need to grow for growth's sake. This mindset that says growth at all costs is what turns websites into shitholes like Twitter and Reddit, and reminds me too much of the hunger for infinite unsustainable growth commanded by capitalism.
if there is not a large population then there will be 0 small subs with interesting content and people will not use this platform. social media sites are successful by being a complete experience for as many users as possible. right now i can't spend any time on this site to talk about any video game or media franchise at all. there is virtually 0 content, discussion, or news about that. its all memes and drama because posting and upvoting memes is easy content, but actually supporting users interests is hard. the only way this platform takes off from here is if some major influence is brought here inorganically because none of the admins seem to know fuck all about running a social media site.
Sounds kinda boring actually.
That's totally valid and you don't have to visit Beehaw if that kind of thing isn't for you.
Lemmy also has that bro. Some clients display it and some don’t, but when I click on your name I see that you have 510 total comment score and 0 total post score.
https://i.imgur.com/NxSyRDg_d.webp?maxwidth=760&fidelity=grand
I believe the devs have said they aren't going to make it officially visible, which is all I care about. If you want to make value judgements on people based on a number so bad that you had to find a client that shows it, more power to you.
I hadn't thought about it until just now but IDK if that number is accurate. My instance doesn't have downvotes, so if you view my profile from lemmy.one it might look like I have a higher karma than if you look from lemmy.world, I'm not sure.
Take it all wirh a grain of salt I say
It's that important tho? There had to be a reason why it isn't the norm
It wasn't important on Reddit. Even there you could only lose 15 points on any downvoted comment and you couldn't lose points for posts. Karma was just a way to measure how frequently you interacted in an additive way. It's only real utility was for mods to bar new accounts from posting without getting come karma from other places first. and Lemmy definitely needs something like that in the near future for moderation, but they have to fix the bug with the total first.
And that system was irrelevant on Reddit just like it is here. You still have a total karma number in the API, every app I have used shows it, even if it is broken right now. Only the default theme on the web page hides the number. The only people who saw value in karma are the people who farmed it and the people who bitch about the people who farmed it. Either way, making posts that get a lot of upvotes specifically to get a lot of upvotes happens here just like I does on Reddit so idk what this OP is trying to say because they're farming karma lol.
There were many subreddits that did not allow participation unless someone had a karma over a certain threshold. For many of them the threshold was pretty low, only meant to stop brand new accounts and trolls, but still.
Additionally, the "people who farmed it" often did so because a reddit account with a high karma score was literally worth money to adspammers and people running bots.
The karma system contributed to what made reddit bad.
You only lost 15 karma on any mass downvoted comment and 0 for posts. The only person who cared about people's karma was you dude.
I don't see how that addresses any of what I said. If anything this seems like this would mean the subreddits that blocked people with no karma weren't even doing it to block trolls, just new users.
I didn't care about my karma or any specific persons, I like to get into arguments about stuff and that is how you get downvoted. I just don't like the behaviour a karma system motivated.
If you're getting downvoted in an argument, guess what, that means you're bad at making arguments. And this system is exactly the same, regardless of if you can see it or not, sorting by top will still sort by the net sum of votes.
I pretty much agree with your second sentence/point, but this is bullshit. I got so many downvotes on reddit for literal descriptions of my perceptions and experiences as a gay woman. Half the time there wasn't even a debate or argument happening. As reddit culture skewed more and more conservative, many technical and nerdy communities became actively hostile to the basic facts of my existence. Then there are all the downvotes I got for believing in human and minority rights while downthread with some bigots. My more visible posts on the same topic would be solidly upvoted, while everything below the arrow was smashed below zero because only angry little shits followed the discussion that far. I agree that the system on Lemmy isn't meaningfully different and will inevitably have the same effects, but sorting by voting over-centralizes the meta and destroys real discussion and diversity of experience and opinion. It literally only works in limited circumstances within subjects that have objectively correct answers. Anywhere else it introduces so much chaos.
I'm not saying people don't pick sides in an argument, but the point is to convince someone you're right, so if you're not doing that, you're getting downvotes meaning you're either wasting your time or making bad arguments.
What I'm saying is that these weren't arguments. These were people weaponizing the voting system to keep minorities from self representing. I was downvoted below zero on a car repair sub for having runflats instead of a spare because I worked in and commuted through a bad part of town, often after midnight, where I wouldn't feel safe stopping to change my tire. They made it clear that I was unwelcome because I am a woman, because my description of this gendered experience was unacceptable subreddit content.
You made yourself verry clear, he's trying to stir you
It's crazy the stories people string together to confirm their biases.
Fuck off. You're exactly the fucking same. If it didn't happen to you, it doesn't exist! Childish.
I'm not going to argue with someone about the story they tell me and how it made them feel because an individual's biased perspective is not an objective observation of how the vote system works. This isn't about you.
You've declared someone you disagree with is making things up while criticizing the debate skills and tactics of those who disagree with you. What a fucking joke. You got some peer reviewed numbers to support your position about votes and arguments? Because from where I'm sitting, this nonsensical notion that people vote rigorously based on debate acumen and never with their emotions and libido along the lines of their existing beliefs is just as much a made up story. I'm not going to find numbers for a bad faith participant like you, but we already know people vote for real, important, world changing things with their emotions. The idea that the general populace is wildly more reasonable and responsible when the votes don't matter at all is ludicrous.
I mean, generally getting downvoted in an argument is a matter of course, at least until people who you aren't arguing with chime in.
Also a lot of what you are saying doesn't really make sense to me? I feel like I'm not sure we agree what we disagree about.
Honestly the shit I got downvoted the most for was just standing up for trans people, reddit is full of transphobes.
You really don't seem to understand the mechanics of link aggregators and their comment sections. The votes are for curating content and downvoting posts that are not relevant or are poor quality is the entire point of the system. If you remove the ability to downvote bad content, you degrade the content for all the users. This is exactly why YouTube removing the dislike counter was an issue.
You already said the youtube thing.
Upvoting posts that are relevant or good quality and ignoring the rest does work though. There are several instances right now where it is working.
It works perfectly fine as a content curation method. I have no way to prove this for this, but it wouldn't surprise me if it works better.
You can't ignore bad posts when they get inflated ranking because no one can downvote them off the front page lol.
They never are on the front page. Idk why you don't get this. If I sort by new I see them but only then. If I did see a post on the front page that I don't like, obviously it is just a matter of taste. It doesn't bother me that I can't downvote it.
You really don't understand how removing the recourse from users to downvote bad content is a negative to any link agregator? Do you just never go to small subs and see less than 5 posts from the last week and not understand that someone could just flood those communities with poor content and the only recourse is for mods to ban that user who could have not even violated their rules? This is to say nothing of how bad nitch communities are already on Lemmy, if we remove the users ability to group moderate it would be even worse.
If I was moderating a small community and someone flooded it with unwanted content, I would consider that spam, which I would have against the rules.
So it would be a perfectly reasonable ban for an explicit rules violation.