So I’ve seen quite a few comments from people regarding the lack of karma so far in Lemmy/The Fediverse, and I was just wondering if because of the nature of how it works if karma is even possible? Although I wouldn’t mind too much about it existing, people have made good points about how much it helps moderation and keeps the trolls at bay, so I feel it’s a very nice too to have. Thanks in advance for the responses!

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    1 year ago

    Even aside from moderation and being able to tell if a user is “legit” or not, I do like to see how my contributions to the community are being received. I still check my profile frequently to see how my recent comments and posts are being voted on. Numbers go up trigger dopamine release, brrrrrrrr.

    However, I also fully recognize the problems it creates with making karma “hoarding” the end goal and promoting shitposts/content stealing instead of meaningful contributions.

    I would support the idea of a karma/vote total that was visible only to the user it belongs to (and/or admins) while being not displayed publicly. It covers the desire to see one’s “community performance” without turning it into an E-Peen measuring contest. And of course, instances could disable it entirely on a case by case basis. Since it wouldn’t be public, the potential for manipulation by abusing custom instances and such to collect votes is basically pointless.