how do people on this site not realize that the points next to your posts affect how your posts are sorted and are literally the exact same system as reddit? am i just so blind that i can actually see the numbers next to my posts or is everyone here just trying to be so anti-reddit they'll make up bullshit that isn't reality?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 never changed my opinion just so I get more karma on reddit either.
Lemmy's system is no different from Reddit's and my original comment was sarcastic. I've noticed sarcastic posts without /s get downvoted more easily on Lemmy for whatever reason.
There's a lot more good faith here. On Reddit you could safely assume anything ridiculous was meant sarcastically, and usually be correct. Here, the sarcasm is not assumed so your comment is more likely to be judged as having been spoken sincerely.
Which is actually really nice, even if it gets a comment misunderstood from time to time. Reddit just feels shitty and hate-filled anymore. But Lemmy feels a great deal more emotionally neutral, and if I dare say so, human -- which is to say, not attempting to increase emotional involvement and generate clicks by being provocative and antagonizing by design.
Karma is the total of upvotes and downvotes a user receives over time not just single posts and comments. It leads to discrimantory moderation and users tend to whore themselves out for upvotes to boast.
Ever heard of gallowboob?
It wasn't a 1upvote=1karma system on Reddit. Mostly, Lemmy does it better by the community caring less and not having posts limited if a user is under a threshold.
Arguably one difference is that on lemmy it's just a straight up sum AFAIK, while on reddit there are some algorithms attached to tweak things so you can't lose vast amounts of karma from a single shit comment and such.
you can only lose 15 points for a comment and 0 for a post. the only thing they do is they jitter the total points to fight botting. its designed to make karma a representation of content given, not necessarily that you have a high hit rate.