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.
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 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.
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
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.
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.
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.
@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
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.