There’s some misinformation floating around regarding Lemmy not having a karma system. While many have discovered otherwise, this is for those who may not have.

While it’s not exposed in the Lemmy default user interface, Lemmy does have a fully functional karma system and it is visible in third party clients such as WefWef and Memmy.

Do with that what you will.

https://join-lemmy.org/api/interfaces/PersonAggregates.html

  • Poob@lemmy.ca
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    3 years ago

    Upvotes are useful for determining what people like and dislike so you can sort posts and comments

    Account karma is for narcissists to masturbate about how loved they are

    • glibg10b@lemmy.ml
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      3 years ago

      Upvotes are useful for determining what people like and dislike so you can sort posts and comments

      > Things people like get more upvotes
      > Upvotes give you karma
      > Therefore posting things people like gives you more karma

      • c0c0c0@lemmy.world
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        3 years ago

        Not sure if this was an argument for karma, but it sounds like an argument for avoiding contraversy and trying to fit in This is why everyone on Reddit appears to have the same opinion. I much prefer a diversity of opinions, and no penalty for speaking one’s mind (while treating each other with decency).

        Karma makes sense, in theory, but in practice, it just punishes anyone who diverges from the herd.

        • Poob@lemmy.ca
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          3 years ago

          My biggest problem with karma is that it bakes in a reason for bots to repost everyone else’s posts. It also encourages people to sell their high karma accounts (god knows why someone would want to buy one)

        • glibg10b@lemmy.ml
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          3 years ago

          it just punishes anyone who diverges from the herd

          So you’re saying people get less karma for posts that diverge from the herd. That can only mean those posts get fewer upvotes, which means they rank lower

          In other words, the sort-by-votes system makes uncontroversial posts more likely to be seen, while the karma system makes those same posts more likely to exist. My point, therefore, is that both systems have a similar overall effect on the website, and that the result of their conjunction is only that the effect is amplified

          • c0c0c0@lemmy.world
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            3 years ago

            Agreed. As others have pointed out, voting helps to elevate higher quality posts (even if it doesn’t always work that way), but karma takes that imperfect process to its ridiculous extreme.

    • SyJ@lemmy.ml
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      3 years ago

      Yeah if people start going for Karma we’ll be plagued by “this” and stupid puns. Yesterday I saw a reddit post where the guy misspelled WiFi as Wife when explaining his problem, and then the top 10 comments were “omg dude you can’t just get a new wife” or “I wouldn’t come to Reddit for a problem with my wife”

      The actual solutions to the problem were rubbish too

      • Boozilla@lemmy.world
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        3 years ago

        Yup, there’s a lot of hurrrr hurrrr hurrr stuff on reddit. Which isn’t inherently bad…but they often just keep pushing it ad nauseum. There’s no such concept as “OK, enough already” on there.

        • SyJ@lemmy.ml
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          3 years ago

          A bit of humour is fine, but when it drowns out the actual information it’s frustrating.

    • Space_Racer@lemm.ee
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      3 years ago

      At the same time it’s shows who you should block. I don’t always remember usernames but I had the top posters like that blocked. Made reddit so much better to use.

    • Atemu@lemmy.ml
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      3 years ago

      I don’t think there is a way to remove that. “Karma” is just the sum of upvotes on all of a users’ posts/comments and that info is always accessible.

      We could make the decision to not show that value in the front-ends of course but you’ll likely have very different opinions on that and some front-ends will inevitably show karma.

      • Sckharshantallas@lemmy.world
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        3 years ago

        But if it wasn’t available in the API then apps would have to do a fetch of all the users posts to calculate it, possibly discouraging it.

  • gdbjr@lemmy.world
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    3 years ago

    Welcome to Lemmy where everything is made up and the Karma doesn’t matter.

  • youthinkyouknowme@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    3 years ago

    Honestly is it even worth anything? Even on reddit I didn’t really pay attention to how much karma a user had, maybe when I wanted to check if it was a bot or something.

    • Copernican@lemmy.world
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      3 years ago

      When it comes to gauging advice, or doing something like buying or trading used goods it was helpful as a proxy for trustworthiness. Older accounts with good karma are a lot less sketchy than brand new accounts.

    • zeppo@lemmy.world
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      3 years ago

      I’d check sometimes whether someone had a history and how long their account had been around, but 18,000 vs 80,000 or 800,000 is super meaningless to me. Personally I’d delete my accounts every 1-6 months. It was a pain to start over but after that, so what. Reddit is practically anonymous. Posts and comments stand on their own to me… it’s not about the reputation of the author.