NEW: Update & Clarification on Votes, Boosts, Favorites, and Reputation Points on kbin
frasassi@kbin.social to /kbin meta@kbin.social – 14 points – Ernest just posted some comments clarifying recent changes to Votes, Boosts, Favorites, and Reputation Points:
- Upvotes & Downvotes function akin to Reddit
- Boosts count as two Upvotes (link)
- Favorites are added to https://kbin.social/fav if you Upvote (link)
- Reputation Points have been updated
In addition to that, Ernest stated that "there is no connection between reputation points and sorting algorithms. It's just info in the profile" (link)
how can I downboost
You have to fill out form ID-10-T and then store some kinetic energy inside a box attached to a mechanical hand in an open palm position ... the box will then be shipped to the person you are "downboosting" and when they open the box, the stored kinetic energy will activate the hand and slap them in the face ... a small audio device will be installed with the package that will play the Windows logon sound bite and then announce 'YOU'VE BEEN DOWNBOOSTED'.
I almost wish reputation and things of that nature weren’t publicly visible. A huge part of Reddit that I hated, the circlejerk-y opinions and same tired lame jokes being told over and over again, were caused in large part by people seeking karma (and that’s not even addressing the actual posts, just the stuff in the comments). I would hate to see that eventually start to come back.
There’s obviously some downside to that and it probably warrants a more nuanced solution if anything.
Reddit turned into an echo chamber because of karma, people didn't want to express a different opinion than what the 'masses' have already decided on, because they would be downvoted and lose karma. The downvote feature itself being misused there too.
Reputation should be hidden or removed imo, keep the up/downs/boosts for sorting.
Critical difference. Reddit had groupthink literally enforced by the software. If you had negative karma in a subreddit and you tried to post, it would say "You are doing that too much, please wait 8 minutes to post again", even if your last post was 2 weeks ago.
You have to try hard to get negative karma in a sub, or just never use it. Frankly, if a person frequents a sub and consistent say things majority of people dislike, is that person really right for that sub?
This wouldn't solve the problem of downvotes being misused as an indicator of disagreement. I think it's best if it stays entirely incidental.
If it does have to return, I'd like it to wipe regularly. Every 3 months or 6 months everyone goes back to zero. Give EVERYONE the same "badge" that just says "so and so was here in year X" or whatever and leave it at that.
Or go back to what forums did and only count post count and word count and turn those into EXP.
I was thinking the same thing. I think the user curation aspect is what made Reddit so sticky compared to old-school forums where you had to wade through every comment one by one, but having a visible karma score incentivized people to try to make the number go up.
I think Goodhart's law applies, because karma is ostensibly supposed to be a measure of how good a contributor you are, but in practice it just measures how good you are at getting people to upvote you, which it turns out doesn't require you to make quality contributions.
Personally a fan of a system that only count the last 30 days. It's not permanent but still let me tell at a glance if someone is likely to be a troll.
I suggested a resetting score elsewhere in here, but I really like this system. Kinda reminds me of Steam's "recent reviews" score. Would let people have a general gist of your recent behaviour. This would allow people to get better or worse and have their score reflect that, instead of one really positive/negative post in their history skewing their score for eternity.
It seems that infinite scroll is now working in comments too?! Nice!
Wait so when am I supposed to boost? Upvotes sort now, so I should usually upvote and boost when I think something should be at the top?
Unless Ernest changed this too and I missed it, boosts still work with the microblogging portion of the fediverse, such as Mastodon. Upvotes and downvotes only interact with the “threadiverse”.
So my understanding is that boosts are now reflecting on threads as 2 upvotes, whereas on microblog posts they reflect as boosts and as 2 upvotes but only on the threadiverse sites.
(Someone correct me if wrong please!)
A boost is more like a retweet, anybody who follows you elsewhere in the fediverse will see the thing you boosted in their feed.
An upvote(=a favourite) doesn't get broadcast in the same way. This is why a boost is weighted as a more significant endorsement.
Upvote = "I like this"
Boost = "I think other people will like this"
Boosts don't count as 2 upvotes, just as two reputation points on your profile page, reputation doesn't do anything.
Boosts do count as two upvotes when sorting Top or Hot (you can check/prove this by sorting a feed by top, it will not always be in order of boosts if some posts have lots of upvotes and less boosts). This has been the case for weeks now. The recent change just brings reputation in line with this logic.
Boost when you want a post to be on your profile
I don't really like this as maybe I just want a comment or post to get more exposure, but don't necessarily want it plastered on my profile page.
My reputation went from -26 to 2800 - finally I can hold my head up in public :)
this just makes it a 2 step hassle to properly upvote something, and skews everything upward since you can either give something +3 or -1. Scores will reflect popularity more than general quality consensus.
This might be a really stupid question, but does that mean we can give a post or comment 3 points with a boost and upvote? Or does the boost account for that so a post will only get 2 points at most?