What other less-toxic system could work instead of karma?
Hey! Thanks to the whole Reddit mess, I’ve discovered the fediverse and its increidible wonders and I’m lovin’ it :D
I’ve seen another post about karma, and after reading the comments, I can see there is a strong opinion against it (which I do share).
I’d love to hear your opinions, what other method/s would you guys implement? If any ofc
From this and other posts on this as well as comments I read and discussions that made me think about it, here's my suggestion.
Upvotes and downvotes but lemmy allows people to only see upvotes in their client if they wish to (be it because they don't like the "negativity" of downvotes or because they're not very good at emotionally dealing with seeing their own comments downvoted)
Some kind of summary of upvotes/downvotes a user got on his or her posts, per forum and only if enabled in that forum. The objective being to as much as possive avoid the gamification side of karma and its side effects (i.e. people taking it in as a "score" which leads to things like karma farming) whilst preserving the positive side of it as a measure of domain expertise or at least willingness to positivelly participate in domain specific forums.
Thats just like 9gag, reddit, and the king youtube bs. If someone sees downvotes as negativity, it is already to late for him on a normal platform. A downvote should be something the author should see and know about. And other users should see that too. As it is a good content filter against clickbaity/scammer or just chatgpt answers.
Whilst I personally agree with you that it's a good idea for an author to see both negative and positive feedback, I don't see what's the problem to allow the "criticism sensitive" types to protect themselves from criticism by toggling and option in their client which makes downvotes not visible to them (but it does nothing for others).
For clarity, my suggestion is not to allow people to disable downvotes, it's to allow them to not see downvotes in their own client - downvotes are still there and everybody else who hasn't "disabled downvote display" on their clients can still see them.
Think of it as a social interaction equivalent of installing ramps for people with disabilities on wheel chairs: nobody else is force to use the ramps but those who need them have them.