Yes. I mean, just because your stupid neighbour celebrates their birthday, it doesn't mean you would stop celebrating your birthday just to be different.
IMO the issue is not copying cherry picked good features from Reddit, but to indiscriminately copy features because "since Reddit has it, Lemmy got to have it too", without paying attention if they actually benefit the Threadiverse.
Good catch on bots - they're a great example of that, since the underlying idea (less busy work) is 100% worth copying but not the implementation.
In fact IMO Lemmy bots are already a bit too similar to Reddit bots in a bunch of undesirable ways. For example they're created and kept as "pseudo-users", instead of tools associated with a (human) user in their profile.
I have no idea what day I first started using lemmy, or when I made an account. I'm okay not knowing.
As for "karma", do any instances track total karma, or just per-comment? Honestly I don't give a shit if my comments do well or not, I don't live for other people's amusement.
As for other people, I can't speak for them, but I haven't seen anyone crying for lemmy to be more like reddit.
Users' aggregate post and comment score has been entirely removed from the Lemmy API (as of version 0.19.0 if I remember correctly). It is not easily accessible to anyone, including admins. You could write a script to sum a user's aggregate score.
Well, in that your upvote total and ratio can be calculated, at least. Does it actually do anything, or can it do anything, like it did on reddit? Subs having minimum karma thresholds, that sort of thing? If not, it's truly meaningless and can be safely ignored by everyone.
I had to look at the community rules to see what to do as well:
If you agree that the opinion is unpopular give it an arrow up. If it's something that's widely accepted, give it an arrow down.
What is the protocol for when I don’t have enough data to assess how popular an opinion is and I want to spread and support it to make it more popular of an opinion?
When something is posted, automatically search to see if that exact thing has been posted before. If it has, then deduct a percent of votes, with the percent increasing each time that exact thing has been posted before. Say, if it's been posted once before, then you deduct 1%, if it's been posted twice, then 2%, and so forth. Feel free to adjust this math in a way that makes the most sense.
If something is legitimately excellent, or if enough people have forgotten it to upvote the repost, then reposts can still make their way to the frontpage.
Otherwise, repeat posts will naturally wither away, while encouraging original content.
Let's get rid of cake day but there is already no karma on Lemmy meaning no general upvote count. It will be much harder to find anything if we get rid of a voting system and the one we have is probably the most transparent and easy-to-understand one 2 opposite force and to possibility to choose neighter.
I'm reminded of the scene in Groundhog Day in which they have that one day that just unfolds naturally and is so wonderful, and then the next time through, the Bill Murray character tries to duplicate it, and it's just awful and cringey.
Lemmy, given the chance, will (continue to) develop its own norms and memes and traditions, and be that much better for it. Just trying to duplicate Reddit here is not only doomed to failure, but cringey.
The reverse can also happen, though. Many of the features of Reddit are there because they are good, so if we just strive to be different for the sake of being different that will end up awful too.
I think it's important for developers to stay active within the community and try to understand how the community uses the tools available and what additions or changes are desired or would be beneficial. Obviously people disagree about what those things are at times, but I think with patience and empathy we can iterate ideas and get to better places.
I see people posting more and more news on Lemmy and I enjoy that, but it does make the need for tools that fight disinformation. Maybe that's the source-checker bot (feels like a stopgap to me) or maybe that's a combination of new ui and api features that draw from Twitter's community fact-checking and how some instances are use bias-checkers.
Moderation tools are always in need of improvement too.
Hey I even think silly shit like emoji reactions and awards have a place for people that prefer less verbal forms of interaction but still want nuance or whimsy.
I suggested such a thing a couple days ago on asklemmy and was roundly shut down. Badges, levels, whatever that would denote longevity and “service” to the communities.
Is there a place where you can see your useless internet points on lemmy. They are only needed to show the general opinion of the thread. It a superior system to reddits bot fueled lies.
So far it seems like people develop around the ideas laid down by social media giants. Rather than replicating, it would be good to see incorporation of healthier options (e.g. time monitoring displayed in app, stopping endless scrolling and keeping to page by page scrolling, avoiding prioritising low effort content (by showing older posts in people's feeds as well and displaying more that prompts comments rather than just upvotes, etc). Don't know how they would design to minimise the hivemind....there's still plenty of that.