A karma score encourages making poor quality meme posts and comments in large quantities to gain more fake internet points. It's easily abused; Reddit is full of karma farming bots.
No downvotes was also mentioned here, but I heavily disagree. Downvotes, in my opinion are mostly a positive thing. Youtube hiding downvotes was a move towards a "good vibes only, no criticism allowed" type of environment.
Lemmy pretty much meets my ideal in this regard, it has downvotes and doesn't have a broken social credit system.
There are posts that contain despicable information/news but are useful to know, and I always struggled between upvoting or not voting since downvoting would remove karma from OP.
Downvotes aren't intended for the subject of the news, but for OP for making the post. If you hate the subject, I guess the correct action is to express it in the comments, or give an upvote if someone else already did.
There was an idea from blahaj.zone who considered making down votes enabled, but have less “weight” compared to upvotes. It sounded pretty interesting but I don’t think they implemented it yet.
Karma as used on Reddit is fairly useless. A web-of-trust style karma system (do people whose opinions I respect also respect this person's opinions) would be helpful for sifting through the crap.
Echo chambers are caused by exposure to only one POV. I suppose WoT karma could be used to build an even more insular echo chamber if someone wanted that.
But I am talking about valuing a person's critical thinking skills, their ability to formulate and express reasonable opinions whether or not I agree with their specific conclusions. If that person finds something challenging, interesting, or fruitful then I want to read it, too.
You cannot control what someone does or doesn't believe but you can teach ways to deal with an abundance of information and political agendas.
To teach a person to correctly look behind the curtain without falling into conspiracy is the greatest gift. My parents failed to do so because they hated discussing topics in a neutral way. They also knew nothing about philosophy or propaganda.
Same way parents can teach stoic wisdom without raising an emotionless kid. Same way we can teach morals and responsibilities without the need of any religion.
I would summarize that parents just should be parents. Kids mirror parents and being calm and focused is so important. My parents were and are always angry and this got imprinted in my subconsciousness, which sucks. (Bully target) Thankful most people grow up fast school age.
For example last weekend I talked to my cousin about some good news sites, that are as unbiased as possible. (In Germany we thankfully have independent press). I think it's important to grow up not drifting in desperation of "all news fake. Voting doesn't matter", it makes one feel helpless and thats the last thing a kid should have to endure.
Understanding how to identify wrong information, as the fake news they are, with examples and exposition is so important.
I think it can encourage unintended behaviors like karma farming.
I've seen similar trends in some FPS games in which during immediate game play your kill to death ratio is hidden to keep people engaged with the main loop instead of getting worked up over their stats.
I guess it depends. The easiest thing would be making it inconvenient to get in the room for no perceived reward. Maybe it's a known room but everyone thinks it's empty/unimportant and it's blocked by an obstacle (boulder, waterlogged door, etc).
If you're going to introduce higher technology or magic, then a lock would make the most sense. Maybe it's opened by someone or it could even be a time or situational lock.
If there's high incentive to get into the room, then there's a couple options. You could make people believe they already accessed the room when the real room is hidden. It could be impossible to enter - no door, difficult material, catastrophic event that moved/blocked it, or even everyone knew of the room but doesn't know where it is now. You could make social deterrents. Maybe there's a superstition around the room, a religious indictment, security personnel, etc.
I hate gamification of... Everything, but if it's just "oh hey I've been here for X years and at some point I got 5000 upvotes / 800 downvotes, that's cool I guess", I'm kinda for it actually.
It's like with videogame achievements. They're not super important for most people, but sometimes it's nice to look back at the stuff you've played or what you had to overcome. Some are addicted to it too. Real life doesn't give you much satisfaction in this way.
I’ve had more traction on my posts and comments in the month or so I’ve been on lemmy than the entire 14 years I was on reddit. I’m glad I’ve moved, couldn’t give two shits how it does from here out, I’m away.
Genuinely felt like filler most of the times, fast food comments, an AI would’ve generated something better etc. Mildly amusing things get beaten to death quickly.
A big shout out to Lemmy.one. I signed up not knowing but love the fact now. Down votes don't add to the discussion. And posts and comments that are in poor taste should just be reported. Ignoring poorly made comments and posts is the best way to extinguish them. It forces the writer to improve their input if they care about the up votes. Down votes just make the user give up in wanting to contribute at all. Lemmy is about contribution. For now it is anyway.
Just look at the reddit accounts in recent years whose goal was to accrue as many downvotes as possible. Contributing absolutely nothing to the discussion.
yup, I started on Beehaw and realized I didn’t miss the downvotes and that it made interacting with comments sections feel much more in good faith. Later moved to my current instance after specifically looking for small instances with applications and no downvotes but federated with (almost) everyone. I know downvotes are still there for most other users but I don’t see them and it’s freeing!
I think not having karma tells the user that they don't have to care about posting the "right" things. This is better, as I think the karma system of Reddit promoted conformity, as people wanted to gamify their experience on the site, and even created a weird economy of people selling high karma accounts to advertisers or whoever wanted karma for whatever reason.
Aside of people probably being a few years older. Less bots and astroturfing and I bet most people who moved to Lemmy are not your average mainstream user, usually more informed than average. It's easier to talk to calm people instead of the "whoosh I got you buddy" person. With fewer user the chance to get heard and not drowned by meme and joke replies is also much higher. But when more user join this likely changes.
Holdover from the older internet. People used to spam the fuck out of them, and it got real old. Combine that with the hive mind, and you get a rabid hatred of emojis
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