Not sure if this is a showerthought, but it popped into my head randomly due to anothe member’s comment that “karma farming isn’t a thing here.” It kinda is…just not as blatant and open as Reddit. If the instances grow in size and number it could become a real thing, we’d have the same issues as Reddit with huge numbers of bots, shills, and karma whoring users.
What if every year we zero out Lemmy points but replace them with a [insert thing here: colored bars?] that maybe qualitatively show positive post and comment levels and sort of show “years of service”?
Get rid of the incentive for points accumulation, but denote consistent positive contribution?
Edit: or leave the comment/post points as the are, but make them only tally a rolling 365 day count and participation in the last 30/60/90 or similar. Continued participation would be obvious, but no substantial amount could ever be collected.
If the points aren’t worth anything, then why would it matter if they change or go away?
E2: welp. People think it isn’t a problem, and they say it will not be. Can’t argue with a position that demands Lemmy/fediverse remain static in its present form. Discussion closed, I guess.
I’m not OP, of course. I think the point is that some people seem to really care about how many upvotes they get for a post (or comment) based upon the type of post they make. I get that it doesn’t get accumulated against the user profile.
Internet points is the only/main explanation I can think of for the repeated low effort/value “questions” that people post. The “what was ‘the incident’ at your school?” one I moaned about yesterday is something I’ve seen posted many times to Lemmy, and is a good example.
If this were Reddit, we’d put it down to karma farming for an account that would eventually become a spam, scam or porn bot, or something like that. But I struggle to understand why it happens here.
That’s the gist of my involvement in the topic, anyway.
Fair enough. I think there’s a fair bit of everyone talking past each other. Yeah, I can see your point about chasing upvotes on posts. I mostly post whatever I’m going to post without regard to votes, but I do enjoy making a popular comment and when I get lots of downvotes I do a quick check if I’m the asshole (sometimes yes, sometimes no). I can see where you’d want to disincentivize low quality shit-posting for upvotes. I’m pretty sure I’d shit-post anyway, though.
But consider: sometimes funny content chains of everyone joking around release tension and provide a way to engage with a post when I don’t have anything of value to say. Engagement is what drives social media. Am I going to comment if I get no engagement? A vote at least says someone saw it and I’m not shouting into the void. And if no one votes or comments my post, how do I know anyone has seen it at all?
If this place were nothing but high quality serious content, I feel like it would be closer to Wikipedia than Reddit. Of course, you’re free to disagree if you find none of this persuasive. I say all that because OP invited folks to explain why they disagreed. I’m not trying to come across as an argumentative prick, I just feel like folks are using words that clearly mean different things to different people. Like I don’t think you and OP are thinking of the same thing. I’m not even sure OP was talking about the same thing at the end as he was in the beginning.
Being able to quantify reach and count likes or upvotes or good stats has been a feature of social media forever. Mastodon doesn’t have or display upvotes, you just get notified when a post is favorited. It works there. But I engage way less there. But what soaks to me might not speak to someone else.
Anyway, that’s all. Thanks for the response.