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What other less-toxic system could work instead of karma?

Hey! Thanks to the whole Reddit mess, I’ve discovered the fediverse and its increidible wonders and I’m lovin’ it :D

I’ve seen another post about karma, and after reading the comments, I can see there is a strong opinion against it (which I do share). I’d love to hear your opinions, what other method/s would you guys implement? If any ofc

cley_faye ,

Score the posts, not the individuals. Attaching imaginary points to any kind of activity instantly turns it into a competition.

Instead, any scoring should focus on actual content, which is basically what the up/down vote is.

FinalBoy1975 ,

Posts should just be upvoted and downvoted with no credit given to the person who posted. Same goes for comments. In my opinion, upvoting and downvoting should just help the user find the most relevant information. Content that people upvote is the most seen. Content that people downvote is the least seen. Posters and commenters stay on an equal footing with no points system.

HangoverTuesday ,

Maybe we could still have karma, but display it as a ratio of good:bad karma or something? Active user and most of your interactions get upvoted, green dot. New user or not active for a while? Gray dot. Established user and all your content gets downvoted all the time, red dot.

Get banned from 50+ subreddits? Your color dot gets changed to a picture of u/spez.

applejacks ,
@applejacks@lemmy.world avatar

best idea I have heard thus far

HangoverTuesday ,

It provides other users with an at a glance idea of your reputation, without chasing a "high score". Could always rank users based on up/down votes, as I said, but limit the range so that as long as you've been active for a few months and aren't a douchebag, your score will be maxed out.

SuperRyn ,

What about the same system, but it shows both upvotes and downvotes?

scarabic ,

I’d prefer that. 2600 up and 2500 down is really different than 105 up and 5 down

SuperRyn ,

Tbf you can probably tell the actual numbers by looking at the % reddit shows in the corner, but that’s not very intuitive

scarabic ,

You can do that for Reddit posts but can you also see it for comments? It wasn’t shown in my client app but perhaps it’s visible elsewhere.

sparr ,

Web of trust. The biggest thing missing from most attempts to build social networks so far. A few sites did very weak versions, like Slashdot/s friend/foe/fan/freak rating system.

Let me subscribe, upvote, downvote, filter, etc specific content. Let me trust (or negative-trust) other users (think of it like “friend” or “block”, in simple terms)

Then, and this is the key… let me apply filters based on the sub/up/down/filter/etc actions of the people I trust, and the people they trust, etc, with diminishing returns as it gets farther away and based on how much people trust each other.

Finally, when I see problematic content, let me see the chain of trust that exposed me to it. If I trust you and you trust a Nazi, I may or may not spend time trying to convince you to un-trust that person, but if you fail or refuse then I can un-trust you to get Nazi(s) out of my feed.

SuperSoftAbby ,
@SuperSoftAbby@lemmy.world avatar

I still firmly believe one of the worst things to happen to the internet, besides pop-up ads, is up and down votes. Nothing exposes a misanthrope quicker than forcing them to comment instead of passively downvoting everything they see. Which makes it easier to remove them from the party.

Tedesche ,

I think you’ve got the wrong idea about misanthropes. But who cares? You’re only interested in excluding people who disagree with you and reinforcing an echo chamber for yourself.

You’re just as much a source of toxicity in these forums as those you wish you could ban from them.

kemsat ,

I think the awards system from Reddit could work, just without it being monetized. The awards let you see how people feel about the comment, and it’s more than just good/bad, like/dislike.

VGarK OP ,

Another user mentioned something like that! I like the idea :D

kemsat ,

I think it’s less braindead than the +/- system, which I think increases our engagement & makes us treat this place more like an irl_space

Sir_Kevin ,
@Sir_Kevin@lemmy.world avatar

That real question is, what problem are we trying to solve? Then we can go from there.

PixelatedSaturn ,

In wondering about that myself. What is the problem?

blivet ,
@blivet@kbin.social avatar

Individual users having some sort of reputation is useful. I always thought it was handy on Reddit to be able to distinguish people I happened to disagree with from actual trolls. The latter always had pretty high negative karma scores, and it was good to know that there was no point in engaging with them.

Valdair ,

This is why it’s useful at the account level. It’s also useful at the post level in order to build a sorting algorithm which raises the most engaging/important/interesting submissions to the top. Within a community it is important to help define what that community is - irrelevant and low effort content is suppressed and relevant/high-effort gets boosted. Moderators can enforce this by just removing and pinning too, but that’s almost always too unilateral, and the voting system is generally better because it’s expected that then you get a representation of how people in that community feel about it. It’s a good system.

jayrhacker ,
@jayrhacker@kbin.social avatar

I can imagine some tweaks to help improve how karma is implemented:

  • Use Bayesan Inference to produce a 'shit/shinola score' for contributors instead simple up/down vote totals
  • Experiment with different recency biases for the score; you can trust that people will change over time
  • Generally figure out what you'll be using karma for and make sure you have a way to measure how well it's working
VGarK OP ,

I’ve googled Bayesan Interference, however I don’t understand what you meant by it. Could you elaborate please :)

FearTheCron ,

Here is a good general explanation of Bayesian inference.

I think @jayrhacker is suggesting using such techniques to predict “troll” or “not troll” given the posting history/removed comments/etc. My personal thought is that whatever system replaces karma, it should be understandable to the typical user. I think its possible Bayesian inference could be used in developing the system, but the end system should be explainable without it.

VGarK OP ,

Thanks for the link. To anyone that does’t know about Bayesian inference, do check it out!

Now I have an existencial crisis thanks to the video 😂 the funny part is that thats the same thing used to detect spam email…

FearTheCron ,

Spam detectors are pretty opaque by their nature. In contrast, karma is pretty easy to understand: “x number of people upvoted comments or posts from this user”. This lets people understand a score even if they don’t agree. If a karma replacement behaved like a spam detector, it would probably just annoy people.

Sporting brackets may be a better analogy. They are developed with statistics in mind but are understandable to the average sports fan. I think a karma replacement should have similar properties.

VGarK OP ,

That sounds awesome! You seem to be quite knowledgeable about mathematics. May I ask what is your background?

FearTheCron ,

Computer science. However, statistics is more of a hobby than anything. I am just intrigued by the idea of federated social media in general so I have thought a bit on how I would personally make it work. Perhaps I will make some more in depth blog posts about my ideas at some point.

Apollo_Katelo ,

Good point, take my:

handshake, pat on the back, slightly too long hug point thingy.

puppy ,

What we have right now in Lemmy strikes the current balance IMO. Individual comments are upvoted/downvoted. But no cumulative score.

AlmightySnoo ,
@AlmightySnoo@lemmy.world avatar

which is the right thing, judge the opinion not the person

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