No Stupid Questions

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

It’s a shame, but any sort of number-based system will most likely end up with the same problems as karma. Not having the numbers add up is a good start though, since upvotes and downvotes are only really useful as ‘in-the-moment’ indicators of good vs bad content.

Let’s keep it how it is, so that we don’t have another social credits system that doubles as a dopamine factory.

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

Unfortunately, anything you replace karma with will have the same problems that karma has. Any indicator of comment or user quality will be readily gamed by anyone with any skills whatsoever in automation.

I much prefer how Lemmy approaches this; upvote and downvote count per comment, no tally of total points.

Way less people trying to Karma farm then and repost content for fake internet points that don’t mean anything.

What about hidden karma?
Like there is still karma used internally to decide what posts to promote and how to weight votes, but the numbers are kept only internally so people don't get obsessed with that number next to their (and others') profile?

We should keep it as is. Having an account score just amplifies a big issue with sm. The content should be in focus, not the people posting. A relevant comment should be hightened because it itself is good. In the same way we shouldn't judge something because the user has a low karma, but because the content is bad.

The idea behind something keeping a score on a profile is good, but it doesn't work as intended in practice. People will farm in whatever way they need to get a moral highground. Not having such a scoring system will be a good way to reduce the incentive to copy/paste content from others.

I'm against any kind of global user ranking.

It makes sense to rank content, but ranking users just begs abuse of the system. There's always those that will try to farm the system resulting in lower quality content. It's also an attack vector for bots.

I don't miss the "karma" aspect one bit here. Rate my post quality, not me. On the other hand, tools for ranking users privately could be helpful. In other words a personal ranking for your eyes only would be fine.

Karma does well in my opinion, however it should display the number of upvotes and downvotes, not just one number. Also adnn an option to sort by the number of downvotes.

Karma and votes should stay but be hidden to other users. Karma is a good way to detect bots and trolls, but just admins and moderators should see it to act on them if needed. And up/down votes should be hidden too because of the hive mind phenomenon that it produces (Experienced on Reddit): often, the funny or sassy or apparently clever comment gets upvoted and sometimes, the comment with knowledge about the post gets downvoted because the first joke was funny. Many people may not have an opinion about the issue but upvote the funny guy and downvotes the real answer just following the hive. Hiding it, each person reading must decide by themselves if they upvote or downvote a comment.

Prizes and awards could maybe stay, not sure

Absolutely nothing. Reducing people to a number and ranking their value based on that is inherently wrong.

Keep it simple, the current Lemmy system works fine. Spambots and particularly disruptive people should just be banned anyways, a gamification system would not solve any issue on that front.

I agree that it might get toxic at one point, but I'd much rather see extra preventive measures to stop repost bots, karma farming and so on rather than removing points altogether. Maybe it also helps to see karma breakdown by community: say you see someone answering a technical question on a specialised community - it would be of little to no relevance there that they might have 10000 points on r/funny or r/aww - I'd much rather see their points on that specific community.

I think we should stop seeing Lemmy as just a substitute for Reddit. Lemmy can be it's own thing, without having to do 'reddit-like' stuff.

Imo, I don't think the karma system is really necessary (it doesn't even make sense) and the upvote-downvote is good enough to filter quality posts.

I like it as it is to be honest.

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.

my take: up only, no down, per-post only, no account. if someone is repeatedly a problem mods can show them the door.

karma systems have been around forever allegedly to decrease mod/admin workload managing users by having them "self moderate" and that has NEVER been the actual effect - they've only ever been an engagement metric for advertising and it didn't matter positive or negative if people were angry downvoting they were still engaged. I've witnessed site after site add these systems and then the userbase turn into a toxic cesspool after. In almost 30 years I've only seen one roll back the change even partially. Their culture never fully recovered and its still dominated by people agitating to get attention and to one-up their perceived rivals.

Let reddit things die with reddit. Long live Lemmy.

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

Embrace the Lemmy system. Resistance is futile. Fake internet points are futile.

I like the system as it is here at the moment. Up-/Downvotes per Post/Comment to show the popularity (and express (dis-)approval). But nothing to collect per account, so noone gets encouraged to post just for the karma.

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.

Why not keep the scores hidden and just use them to order stuff?

(1) No Karma system at all

(2) Karma spread over several numbers rather that one; think of Github's user page for example, stats for everything in general on one's profile to reflect general activity

(3) Community award badges

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.

I loved forums, and we didn't have anything, except for 'total posts' and 'total replies' for users. I like that.

I do like upvoting, but I think karma should be hidden. Maybe if you go to user profile and click a button to see the value. It should not show if you hover over the user in a discussion, like Reddit. This is too much incentive for Karma farming.

I don't like downvotes, and that's the reason I'm on lemmy.one - no downvotes here at all

No system. The goal isn't Reddit 2, it's a federated link aggregator.

Here's a crazy idea. What if down voting a comment/post resulted in a weighted random float between 0-1 while upvoting resulted in a weighted random float between 1-2? If you virulently hate a comment or post, ignoring it is the surest way to bury in completely. Posts and comments that Garner attention become the most visible, but gaming the system for visibility could become difficult if the weighting algorithm was tuned appropriately.

Advogato reputations: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advogato#Trust_metric

How about expanding the votes into multiple kinds of karma. Make it possible to place several votes: "on topic/off topic", "funny/boring", "shit post", "solution to the question", "agree/disagree", "political", "Interesting", "Spam", "Original Content", etc.

Communities could create whatever rating is suitable for their forum.

Sort of like tags, but votable.

It would basically reward everyone for what they do (being a level 7 funny shitposter is something) but at the same time making it possible for others to filter out anything they don't care about. So instead of clicking downvote because of disagreement or upvote because it's funny, there would be an outlet for that in its own vote.

I feel that would make it easier to find quality content whether you're looking for serious debate or the hottest memes.

We'd need better comment filtering on individual communities, and it could/would be abused, but overall it would be facilitate the possibility of having different kinds of conversations on the same topic.

Sometimes I want to read funny stuff in serious topics and sometimes there is serious stuff in funny threads, and sometimes people write clever stuff that I disagree with and so on. One vote is just not enough.

Personally i like to call em WIP. Worthless internet points. Just to be clear i cherish my WIP. I would never disrespect my WIP. That's just my name for it.

I don't think you can have anything in the same spirit that isn't toxic and doesn't encourage brigading by minority groups who want to cancel opinions they don't like. The whole concept is simply glorified ad hominem.