in what ways do you think kbin should strive to be different from Reddit?
This might be an unpopular opinion, but karma/reputation points. It only encourages hivemind and echo chambers. I’m ok with thread-specific points so that content can be ranked, but that’s it.
I agree with this. Fake internet points ruin the internet.
But how will I feed my endless addiction to numbers?
This is actually pretty neat. Thank you!
With hobbies involve lots of data. Anything with an excuse to make a spreadsheet or Grafana dashboard. My latest one is home weather monitoring.
Or if you just want to see a number get bigger, Cookie Clicker is a surprisingly deep distraction.
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Agreed. This place shouldn’t be a popularity contest.
@arth or a race to the top with the wittiest one liner. Or a serious thread just consisting of one liners. I’ve loved kbin for how verbose people can be on here, really getting into the spirit of discussing and debating. Proper conversations, not just pun after pun
Some of the pun chains were fun.
But never on a serious topic. Let’s add to the list, that “this is the way” bot that the dude then botted comments in a restricted (or was it private?) just to “win” on the bots leader board.
Yep this ^
The comment/article up/downvote functions combined with personal filters/ban/blacklist tools is all that’s needed. Some kind of strange “karma” or global reputation over time is the detrimental to the site and discussions and encourages bandwagoning users.
There are some basic use-cases, imho. Quite a few subs required a minimum level of karma, age, and perhaps activity to reduce spammers.
I see no reason to track karma above 1000 or so, though. Even the most choosy subs never asked for that much karma, so I assume that should be fine.
No karma tracking above 1000 karma. Just display karma as “1000+” and that’s it.
The karma system was not even effective against spammers, while it did block out genuine new accounts and people with unpopular opinions. Bots would just repost popular posts and comments to farm karma and bypass the restrictions.
It would have been if it was used right.
Anyone with half a brain could spot a karma farming account. When I first became a mod of a very large sub there I looked at the recent ban log and spotted some accounts banned a couple months back for karma farming. They were being used for things like promoting drug sites, crypto, etc.
The algorithm used karma and history to help filter/restrict accounts. The problem was that not everyone was committed to doing that. Most of the meme subs had mods who just didn’t give a shit and when you sent them a modmail with: ‘Hey these are clearly bot accounts reposting word for word popular posts including the links (which is a really good indication it’s a script’, they just wouldn’t do anything or just very aggressively respond that they wouldn’t do anything. Henceforth their subs became ground zero for botters and scammers who wanted to build history on an account.
Reddit had an automated process, as far as I could tell, for banning/restricting these kinds of account. If enough large subs banned them in a period of time, it would seem like their accounts would be suspended almost immediately. So if they happened to post in the wrong group of subs when I spotted them, I’d modmail all those subs and they’d all ban them and the account would disappear, but if they hit the right subs where the mods didn’t care, then they wouldn’t, and it would take a lot more work to get them dealt with.
Karma is a good way to track participation, but if people ignore/abuse the system it falls apart.
The fact that reddit didn’t have a process in place to track accounts posting word for word (including link) reposts and immediately ban them was really weak. Also the fact that the algorithm checked karma and history but the admin gave their blessing to subs like freekarma4u because some subs had karma requirements was a bit of a joke.
At the size of Reddit, it’s impossible as a mod to keep track of every account’s individual activities. A mod of a meme sub with millions of subscribers isn’t going to vet every user in the sub. To recognize a karma farming bot, you would have to know that their content is reposted. But if you’re viewing the bot’s post for the first time, how would you know? You would just assume that the post is original and upvote it. The karma bots also crop or filter their reposted images to make sure “repost identifier” bots don’t catch them.
You don’t need to vet every user in the sub. It is trivial to write a bot that detects whether or not things are reposts. There was literally a repostsleuth bot that did just that. All they would have had to do is pay attention to it.
I modded a sub of over 25 million subscribers and there wasn’t an unfiltered post that I didn’t go through. If you aren’t checked out as a mod, it’s pretty easy to spot the reposts after you mod the sub for awhile. It’s also fairly easy to spot a bot that needs investigating if you actually click on their profile.
The bots carried on for years doing little more than simply copying the previous post word for word and even if the image was hosted on reddit, they’d just repost the same link, they were trivially easy to catch and the mods of those subs couldn’t even put that little bit of effort in. Right up until the end of pushshift bots were reposting top posts from subs.
trying to dismiss their inability to act because bots have gotten more sophisticated doesn’t excuse them because they didn’t do anything when they were simple.
Well, there are some, like /r/SupremeClub that requires 100 000 comment karma. Of course that’s the entire point of the sub.
The reality is those restrictions/gates just became goalposts and frequently moved fairnebough that it was easier for the spammers to get past with a repost bot (or kharma farming sub)
Spammers are not the only thing this is meant for. One example would be the give-away subs. /r/SteamGiveaway etc. Their requirements don’t prevent every malicious post, but it did keep people from just easily creating dozens of accounts to game the system.
Maybe the average Reddit lurker. But that’s the point I- and others- are making.
People who are trying to game the system to get free loot, are…. Going to game the system…. And the karma restrictions made it harder for actual people who aren’t gaming the system
agree totally, the constant reposting to karma farm was one of the biggest annoyances
I agree. People can never fully seem to grasp that upvote and downvote do not mean agree and disagree, which discourages real conversation and ferments a hivemind.
People that want to put the effort in to have real discussions also don’t tend to care about internet points. But people that care about internet points are more inclined to only post low effort content and continual reposts.
That’s not the fault of people, it’s the fault of the UX design. Because psychologically, the most natural interpretation is Like/Dislike.
In addition, while using it as a Like/Dislike can cause valid opinions to be lost when it comes to comments, it’s far more useful at the thread level, where you do want thread positions to be based on what the users of that thread want to see versus don’t want to see.
However, someone else made an alternate suggestion, which is to have 4 arrows instead of 2.
One set covers Like/Dislike, while the other set covers Relevant/Not Relevant. I’m not sure that applies on the thread level, but it might be a nice enhancement for comments.
upvote and downvote do not mean agree and disagree
Oh man, that really angered me with reddit. Make a controversial opinion and you are obliterated. It made subreddits like /r/UnpopularOpinion absolutely pointless, and having a discussion unfun
It’s why I personally chose Beehaw. Removing the down vote ability is truly, in my opinion, a wise decision if you want real discussion rather than anger
Yes, karma farming just encouraged reposting of popular posts. I can’t stand seeing the same thing over and over again- across and in the same subs.
I honestly prefer the way Fark handles comment voting. Smart or Funny. No upvotes or downvotes, just whether you enjoyed the comment for its humor or its intellectual content.
Many forums have additional ratings/reactions. Sufficient Velocity has the most I recall off-hand: Like, Hug, Informative, Insightful, and funny as basic reactions. All of them are used regularly by users.
Honestly, SV may be considered overdoing it, though I personally like it. They also have Meow for paid users and Facepalm specific posts in a subforum. Even further, there’s gilding and maybe a dozen more reactions which are only active during specific events. Very much unnecessary to have that much.
That’s nothing. There’s a forum I post on during the NFL season called Sports Hoopla, which has the following post reactions: Like; Love; Haha; Wow; Sad; On Fire; Winner; Angry; Facepalm; You’re Funny; Mind Blown; Boring; Bullseye; Poop; Wondering; Useful; Cake; Clown; Rainbow.
Power user from Reddit here. Yeah, it helps create some of the toxicity. Definitely for not having that crap follow over to the Fediverse
I agree. The fear of losing karma gave me “posting anxiety”
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It’s my understanding that “reputation points” isn’t fully implemented yet and means nothing right now. I can’t point to a source for this. Something I read somewhere that I’ve forgotten.
God yes. Not even close to unpopular. I’ve been going back and forth about it because it was sold as a barrier for entry to bots but, as was already noted, they just all hung around that damn free karma sub or reposted a single meme and then it was off to the races.
I get the feeling behind including it, but its only inarguable value is sorting the feed. Easy enough to just hide it outside of articles and then we’d all be better off.
I like this idea
AMEN.
I liked the idea is having awards or little extras that you can award to posts you’re keen on, but what I didn’t like was that Reddit profited from it
Something like that here might actually be useful as the money could act as donations for the devs to pay for their time / server fees. At least in that way people are getting something small but contributing.
I personally liked the gold-silver awards, but felt like adding million award options really cluttered the UI. But I agree it’s a great way to get some money for server hosting.
This is the thing;
I don’t mind to pay for services, I don’t mind to pay for extra’s as long as the money goes to the people doing the work and the people doing the work increase or maintain the user experience of said service.
The whole “you just want free stuff” people were shouting on Reddit is a bunch of balony.
- Hosting costs money
- Infrastructure costs money
- Developing costs money
- Maintenance costs money
All the above also costs time.
So of course it is okay for people to donate or have some monetization possibilities to keep the lights on and getting paid for the work they do so they can make a full time living from it or use it as a part time gig.
But there is still a difference size rift between the above and trying to monetize every single thing from your platform/user base just because of greed.
Well, there is this:
https://kbin.social/awardsDoesn’t seem to be an active feature right now though.
Those are more like Reddit trophies, Reddit awards are the little stickers next to posts and comments (like “Reddit Gold” and “Wholesome”) that users pay to add to comments. It would be interesting to see how awards and payments work with federation.
This functionality is more of an ‘achievments’ than ‘awards’ and is exactly the same as on old version of wykop.pl which kbin interface is mostly based on.
Those look more like Reddit’s trophies
I can see that working well as long as awards don’t affect the placement of comments and posts. Have it just show a icon next to the comment or post like a reaction.
If magazines can have custom award icons that’d add some charm to the feature.I don’t like the awards but I like the idea of tipping - in a private and indirectly helpful way. Specifically, being able to send a small, “that was awesome” note to the poster but directing the money to the poster’s instance. The problem is that I expect it to be corrupted and monetize servers/instances to generate revenue rather than simply defray costs, which would be a net negative for the fediverse overall.
In the end i think payment for content in any form will imbalance the system. I’ve already donated to one of my two instances and will do so for the second if the owner starts allowing it (they’re currently not accepting any donations). We should all be responsible enough and just let our upvotes be upvotes.
If it were a way to actively support the site/servers, I wouldn’t mind. This site won’t continue very long without some way to pay for it
Maybe emoji reactions, calckey, and a few other 'verse services have it
I hope kbin never implements fuzzy votes or shadowbanning.
If you have a system of upvotes and downvotes, don’t falsify the numbers. If you ban users, don’t pretend they aren’t banned.
Agreed, Shadowbanning is ridiculous, and fudging numbers defeats the point of the numbers existing.
The purpose of the fuzzy voting was to make it harder to game with bots.
I have no idea how effective it was at achieving this but that’s the reason.
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Fuck, thee goes my Spez.ml instance.
I never liked the auto-banning feature Reddit had where if you join X subreddit you get a ban from Y subreddit. Dogshit auto moderation like that needs to stay on Reddit tbh
That wasn’t a feature of reddit. That was the mods of that sub running a bot that checked for you posting there. They had issues with people from that sub and just decided that if people participated there, then they weren’t welcome in their sub.
Well, I think it’s already here but with instances
Awards. I just think they’re unnecessary for an internet forum.
i wouldn’t totally mind this since it could go directly to funding the server/Ernest without ads, and people can show ‘extra love’ for posts they like, but i can understand why it would be disliked.
I get wanting to donate to the server. I personally find them annoying and think it encourages people to troll to bait awards.
They could be a better revenue source than ads, I believe.
Or just improve on the awards system and make it shared donations between the instance owner and app developer. The more usage, the higher contributions probably.
other parts of the fediverse have emoji reactions already. you can emoji react to kbin posts from elsewhere, but it doesn’t show up on kbin.
this means that kbin may eventually get something like Awards, but if they use the same APIs as emoji reactions, they won’t be paid.
Ad revenue. I’d rather give money directly to my instance owner.
Shadowbanning. Either outright ban someone and let the community know why, or don’t. That’s it! Transparency and honesty are the way to go. Arguably this is more of a moderator/admin morality issue than anything else, but still.
Unfortunately shadowbanning is a very useful feature against spambots, so it will probably be implemented in the fediverse as well.
Yeah, unfortunately the good outweighs the bad in regards to this I think.
Any ban should be transparent to the users.
Vulcan was a victim of the Snoo Shadowbans, apparently due to usage of VPN services.
This I disagree, I believe it’s useful to let trolls and spam bots talking to themselves, alerting of a ban will only make them to take measures to circumvent the block. The problem would be mod abuse, not the tool.
All the new crap that theyve added in the last 3-5 years. Chat, spamming me with “recommended” reddits, constantly asking for my interests, slow as hell site, avatars, NFTs,…
Relay and old.reddit really kept me sheltered. I knew chat was a thing but I managed to avoid the rest. That all sounds awful.
Ugh chat. The only reason I had the official app, and every part of it was under protest. But the makeup resell subreddit was an absolute steal for unused, still sealed product, I probably both 10s of thousands of dollars of high end makeup for pennies on the dollar over the last 12 years. But the second chat was introduced all the sellers used that instead of pms.
Fuck the recommended subs bullshit. I was a frequent poster and reader of r/personalfinance so reddit kept recommending r/povertyfinance. One look through that led me to block the sub, but it kept popping up anyways. Same with subs for specific cities even though I don’t live anywhere near them.
Don’t forget at one point they wanted to copy Clubhouse too!
NFT avatars 🫠
Karma scores - on an account level at least. Up/down votes on a post or comment are fine and make sense, pushing bad replies down and the best, most thoughtful stuff to the top.
But a system where accounts can build up a karma/reputation score just leads to karma whoring comments just intended to gain upvotes and adding little to the conversation. Or worse, repost bots just reposting whatever was popular last week to gain karma. Reddit’s been plagued with it for years and it just makes the whole place seem spammy and low quality.
Exactly. Comments and posts/threads should have up and down votes, but those should not accumulate on an account like Karma does.
It gets people used to the idea that the more points a person has, clearly the better quality their account must be, when in reality Karma could be easily accumulated by exploiting lurkers with cute animal photos or generic/milquetoast opinion pieces literally nobody could disagree with.
Edit: milquetoast not milktoast
milquetoast
Fair. TIL
Reddit Karma exists to get a score of 1000000, at which point the account is worth serious money on the black market. With a Karma of 1000000, all banned subs and moderated/deleted content is visible. It’s the world’s biggest CP operation operating in plain sight. Always has had that reputation, but nothing ever changed.
Auto generated usernames
They make it easier to see bots, at least.
Yes and no. Bots by their nature fall into patternswhich is what makes them easy to identify. But auto generated uns actually make it much easier and faster to create new accounts. You can all but script account creation and captcha becomes less effective every time we use them for sites that use the data to make their ai better.
Yes the auto names can make it easier to spot off a boy, but it’s not a dead give away.
6 of 1 half a dozen of the other
Randomly generating names is trivial to implement. I don’t think that Reddit suggesting a name itself really saves the spammers much work.
You’re not wrong. But ithat’s why I said 6 of 1. Neither option really discourages bots or recognizing bots, but I do take space in the fact that one creates a slight inconvenience, even if it just means 1 less account every week because another bot already took that randomly generated string of letters and numbers.
Anything they force upon you in new Reddit. Compare old to new, and you see that the same amount of page nets you a third of the content. So much bloat. Profile pictures are nice, tags and flairs are nice, but any of the crap they introduced to make things more like Facebook and Twitter can go right in the bin.
All those god damn awards & animations that came with the redesign. It’s nothing but bloat & distracting.
An automod which deletes comments with words that are not allowed with zero human review.
I ran into issues using words like “kill” for example, which I understand isn‘t good in the context of calling for violence and should then be modded, but I only used it in a way that should be accepted. Like reacting to a headline which is about people being killed by a government, I should be able to use the word kill in a sentence that criticises that.
Probably why this stupid word unalive now exists is how common it seems to be to censor the word kill entirely, like… sure, you don‘t want people to incite violence or talk about hurting themselves, that’s reasonable—but it ain‘t going to happen by making a word a taboo!
People just make up new words to say the same thing or use framings like “an action which ends a life” etc so hopefully if this stays small we can have actual human decisions which include context when it comes to censoring.
I understand not liking overzealous filters but I would like a feature to allow blacklisting words in magazines, otherwise you’re going to get people shouting slurs at others and getting away with it until a moderator comes to clean it up.
Oh man this was the worst. Even game subs like Call of Duty the mods would not allow anyone to talk about Skill Based Matchmaking (SBMM) so they just auto-modded every single thread about it. These same mods pretty much run every CoD sub so they were all unfortunately power-tripped the same way. If a community is upset about something they should be able to speak their mind, not hide it all because it might look bad for a company.
What a weird rule. What was their justification?
Probably why this stupid word unalive now exists
IIRC that specifically came from TikTok, rather than Reddit.
That had nothing to do with Reddit, reddit never censored that word. The mods of that sub would have set that up.
Well the automod message said they had set it up that way on account of the admins telling them to or get the sub banned.
Either way, as far as I understand the fediverse that can‘t happen here, if an instance turns too restrictive for my tastes I can move on and there is no overarching admin who would ban the instance out of existence, it would just get defederated.
So for example if kbin bans the word kill and instructs an automod to delete all comments that contain it and I get annoyed by that, I could make my own version of kbin or join some other version where we can still say it.
Sounds like they’re just making excuses. The admins came out and said that encouraging or supporting violence/death was bannable and could lead to subs being quarantined. They never said they had to filter the word kill. Plenty of subs have the word kill appearing in comments every day.
