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.

  • hendrikEnglish
    11•3 months ago

    Yeah, as the other people here pointed out, there is no such thing as karma here on Lemmy. So your post is a bit pointless. In fact they tried not to include too much gamification, in a deliberate attempt to address a few issues with how it works on Reddit.

    And showing the number of posts a user posted isn’t the same thing. You sometimes want to know if someone is active, or a regular, or a lurker or a new account. And getting that info requires a few clicks and a deliberate attempt. Not something people are going to brag with. It doesn’t even tell much. Could be 100 low-quality posts. Or 100 posts done in 5 minutes in a private community that no one ever read.

    And I mean even if there were Lemmy points and you’re zeroing them out and introduce a “years of service”… Isn’t that going to be the next toxic metric people are going to brag with? And it’ll incentivise people to create some empty accounts, so they have something ready in the future, should they need it. Or they’re going to look down on other people and say “yeah, but I have 2 years of service”… So I’d argue if you want to get rid of farming points, you have to get rid of them, not introduce a different one.

    • 𝒍𝒆𝒎𝒂𝒏𝒏
      4•3 months ago

      introduce a “years of service”… Isn’t that going to be the next toxic metric people are going to brag with?

      looks at Steam account

      I feel personally attacked 😂

      • hendrikEnglish
        5•3 months ago

        Mind posting a screenshot? I see it like in the screenshots by the other commenters… No karma anywhere…

        I mean there are apps who do things differently, and they can go ahead and compute something, add up the votes and display that. But it’s not in Lemmy itself. Not that I’m aware of.