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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
@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
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.
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 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 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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
Karma was supposed to be- does the post fit the sub, if so upvote, if not downvote; but people use it as a meter to say they agree or disagree, like or don't like. It seemed to inspire hatred and anger. There's so much negativity towards others on Reddit. I'm not sure how to stop the antipathy but personally I don't want to see that here.
Also, cross posting from apps like tictok is bothersome. If I want to see this type of thing, I'll go there and watch.
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.
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.
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.
I know it's going to happen anyways but automod. I don't need a fucking DM because I subscribed, automatic replies or any of that stupid garbage. The worst part is you can't block automod from messaging you either. Nobody uses that shit for anything actually useful, or at least those features of it.
@janWilejan The constant reposts in like 10 subreddits that all make it on /all. Some kind of filter to see if once and be done with it. Though, I think removing Karma/Rep would take care of that.
I didn't like my post history being available for public access. For example, if I post in a sub for suicide bereavement, that information is meant for that one small community. I don't necessarily want others to be able to see it and know that personal information. The same could go for victim support, mental health, or other health related subs.
I also don't want to be followed. I know there's a way to turn it off but I learned that way late in the game.
the workaround for that is to use different accounts.
I personally am privacy conscious so I used a different reddit account on each device. After I was "stalked" across different subs by one particularly delightful individual after we had a disagreement, I also made it a practice to create a fresh account every 2-3 years or so. I did this consciously on my desktop/laptop, but on my phone it was easier - every time I get a new phone, I make a new account.
The downside is that you lose your karma, which... isn't a downside for me at all.
I like how the top comment isn’t always the first one. In Reddit, It felt like if you were one of the first comments on a new post, you were most likely going to have a top comment.
Here it looks like there’s better discussion and you have to scroll through comments and get varying opinions on the topic. This can become more difficult as magazines get bigger and start to get more engagement, but right now it’s nice to see several different comments and not the same message over and over.
I hated having to go to imgur.com in a desktop tab in Chrome to upload an image, then to figure out the URL, then to swap back to the post in RiF to be able to include the image in a post. That's a 'feature' I'm glad is dead with kbin (and presumably other fediverses) - can attach an image to a reply just by clicking the icon and browsing for it.
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