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.

  • MagicShel@programming.dev
    9·
    3 months ago

    There is no karma or points and I can’t figure out why you would call a raw count that. The count means absolutely nothing. I could make a board and post “lol” a thousand times to drive up that number. And if you reset it after a year I could just do it again.

    If you care how many times someone has commented and feel like you’re winning or losing anything based on that, that’s pretty weird. You’re asking why people are so opposed to this change if counts aren’t important, but why is the impetus on someone to defend the status quo when your only reason for wanting to change it is some people might be weird about it. Show me weird behavior. Demonstrate how it is a problem without referring to Reddit which is a completely different system with no relevance.

    Show a need for a change and we can talk options and tradeoffs. That’s a reasonable conversation. This… isn’t. But that’s okay. I’ve posted dumb shit before and it turns out regardless of up or down votes, it’s still just one comment.