Another Reddit refugee here,
I think we’re all familiar with the Karma system on Reddit. Do you think Lemmy should have something similar? Because I can see cases for and against it.
For: a way to tracking quality contributions by a user, quantifying reputation. Useful to keep new accounts from spamming communities.
Against: Often not a useful metric, can be botted or otherwise unearned (see u/spez), maybe we should have something else?
What do you all think?
The karma system, as we former redditors know it, is susceptible to abuse (especially on a decentralized platform), results in a drive to repost popular content repeatedly, and is a poor representation of quality contributions. My vote would be no.
The “karma system” is a perfect example of why giving power/control to users is a bad idea – it will always be exploited/abused in one way or another. Something something “this is why we can’t have nice things.”