I noticed that Lemmy has the reddit system with upvotes and down votes, but I didn’t found anything about the general ratio of up/down a user have, am I missing something or it is intended?
I noticed that Lemmy has the reddit system with upvotes and down votes, but I didn’t found anything about the general ratio of up/down a user have, am I missing something or it is intended?
That’s a valid and valuable point.
In a way, both systems are just different implementations of social regulation. One system achieves it through numbers. If you remove numbers, people will still express their approval or dismissal, in words. This has some regulating effect on what people write, how openly they express themselves. And I’m not even sure that’s a bad thing.
Of course, in a system with karma people can still additionally express their reactions with words.
My main point is, we cannot have a system without social regulation, that’s just an inherent part of human interactions. I can think of reasons for and against amplifying it further with karma. Personally I like it though.
I think they were refering to “karma whoring”. It has nothing to do with social regulation, just the fact that there’s a bunch of people (and bots!) that will do anything for fake internet points. It’s just insincere at the end of the day.
Yes, I think you are right. I did not distinguish properly between karma within a thread, and karma across threads, on an account level.
Within threads (which is what we have here) karma can function as a social regulator. Across threads (which we don’t have) it depends on too many other factors like community size to have that effect.
I agree the latter encourages “karma whoring” without being able to sort good from bad anymore. So at the end of the day, I find the current system is a quite sensible compromise.