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This reply you’re reading right now being downvoted to oblivion using a supposedly unwanted karma system.
Expressing our dislike is not the same as the karma system. My profile does not have a score that communities will use to discriminate against me and stifle my comments because I'm not popular enough. We should be able to express our dislike without having a giant thread of arguments over it.
Exactly; the main point of karma for Reddit doesn’t apply here, and there are options in apps to just show total score.
I use downvotes for two things: the person was, needlessly, a jackass, regardless of whether they’re right, or they’re wrong in such a way that I don’t have the energy/ability to sort that out (or just trolling). I’m sure others do the same for me, and that information should be available to others.
It’s still karmic if comments are sorted based on it.
You can change that to New and hide read comments. Or just keep scrolling and read comments as they are. Organization that can be changed is different from not even being able to comment.
Yeah, it's not like there are many comments on Lemmy anyways.
True, but the effect is still there, you’re just hiding it in favor of another setting.
Besides sorting by age or number of replies, how else would you sort comments, and is that any better than using user generated scores?
It was never that I minded Lemmy's karma system (assuming such a thing wasn't in the wrong hands), it's that, if others were said to have minded, you would've never guessed that if you signed up today, based on how it's visibly used. Personally I always sort comments based on how new it is, with new ones showing at the top. I do this on every website I'm on, as well as upvote everything I interact with for memory's sake. The thing is when you have any popularity-based system is, what exactly is being represented? Sometimes I go somewhere and the most popular example of something is at the top based on no discernable values, which also sometimes suggests something was amiss. How does one please anyone/anything where the interests are inconsistent? This problem does not exist on Reddit.
Also to note is that Reddit's karma system, which includes the added user-generated score system on their profile that a subreddit can use to vet people, has served as a good tool against people making a presence only for the purpose of an agenda, whether it be marketing or targeting. It also was more complex than simply "upvote to nod, downvote to shake your head". Reddit has things in place to prevent weaponization. Here it's relatively simple.
Those are all good points! Certainly some of it is growing pains, but it would make for a better entry point to have a walkthrough upon signup. That could be true of apps, as well.
It’s all a balancing act, isn’t it? Between managing reputation and the increased trust/context it brings, allowing for a broader range of opinions (and more contentious ones) versus encouraging consensus within a community, and managing user expectations. How do you keep out trolls and chan-culture without encouraging fearful bean counting and a smoothening of the many bumpy opinions into what is widely perceived as acceptable?
What works for a suddenly engorged, amorphous and non-profit driven organization like Lemmy is going to be different from what Reddit can do from a top-down perspective. I’ve always held paid actors to a higher standard than unpaid ones, so I’m willing to rely more on my own internal sorting of value. Everyone has experienced a time where they or someone else made a good point that was ignored in favor of the popular person’s more mundane one, and I think that that’s just a part of humanity that you can’t kick out without establishing some sort of external arbiter.
I don’t know the answer to it, just that a simpler system that one disagrees with is easier to navigate than one that’s more complex.
How is this so? Everyone here has a karma score. I see mine, and everyone else’s when I look at their profile.
But those don't do anything here. On reddit visibility is based on karma, with negative karma you get buried and your comment might even be auto-hidden¹. On Lemmy, all comments are visible all the time, including their vote ratio. There's no ad based recommendation algorithm to please, so it's not vital. So it's more of an ad-hoc opinion poll on the comment content.
ADD¹: And to add, it might be auto-hidden against the viewing user's will. Sometimes, even if you sorted by controversial and wanted actively to read comments with negative karma, you would have to manually unfold them one by one. This is reddit taking away the control from the user. It isn't an option, it's not a setting.
Ahh! Interesting. I didn’t see it that way or know that’s how it worked. Thanks for the response.
Comments are still sorted on a post based on its points, hence it’s technically karmic. And would ya look at that, the seemingly-innocent-enough (to not expect fate to oblige) comment was no joke. It’s almost as if the originating source of visibly expressed opinion on a predictive basis works for me.
Comments are sorted however you want them to be.
But for those with the points-based sorting turned on, the effect will be the same for the person who has made comments for the very reason that there are those out there viewing them based on popularity. Karma posting requirements on Reddit aside, the same can be said about Reddit's post popularity system.
Karma was more than just how many points your post or comment got, it was a system that was used against users and was meant to stifle discourse in the name of popularity. Being able to sort a post by highest voted comments is an option, but that does not come close to being a karma system. It's a small similarity. I feel like of all the things to not like about Lemmy, upvotes is pretty small beans.
Any system where points mean something to someone's ability to do something or to present themselves counts as a karma system.
How do the points have any affect on your ability to do anything on Lemmy?
That is entirely dependent on what app you're using. I can't say for sure what the web browser looks like cause it never lets me log in. And it was made pretty clear that the "points" mean nothing, they are simply a byproduct of people wanting express their like or dislike and have no effect on your experience on Lemmy. Karma absolutely changed your Reddit experience.