• Serge Tarkovski@lemmy.ml
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    4 years ago

    Can’t quickly understand whether it has a meaning. Any point in the above summing, what does it mean? If I only downvote other people’s content, I get a negative karma? It’s rather “I’m a negativist”. On the opposite, if people only downvote my posts and comments, this is IMO closer to a concept of (negative) karma (but can quickly become a massive shaming “hey friends, let’s downvote his/her comments”).

    • Dessalines@lemmy.ml
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      4 years ago

      A lot of the bigger reddit accounts do what’s called Karma farming, where they post really popular memes to a few big subreddits at specific times, and potentially have bots that upvote them, because early upvotes can boost a post.

      Then these popular accounts can be marketed and sold for their attention-grabbing value.

      Also a lot of people just obsess over their account karma in a really unhealthy way.

      There are troll accounts like you’re saying too, where the goal is to get a negative score.

      • Serge Tarkovski@lemmy.ml
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        4 years ago

        This explains why people use karma and maybe why Lemmy doesn’t have it visible. But actually I’m asking why karma is available via API, and why it’s a sum of user’s own votes instead of votes made against the user’s content?

        • Dessalines@lemmy.ml
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          4 years ago

          Not sure why we still have it available in the API, might be useful for some thing we haven’t thought of yet.

          why it’s a sum of user’s own votes instead of votes made against the user’s content?

          Oh, it is the second one, the sum of votes against the user’s content.

          • Serge Tarkovski@lemmy.ml
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            4 years ago

            Got it. I’m too have no clear vision whether it can be of use. At least as FYI and maybe shown for admins/moderators only to keep in mind whether someone is a potential troll. I’m against China-like reputation systems.

            Actually, I’ve got a question: any plans/ideas or already implemented stuff in Lemmy to prevent massive (and maybe even automated) trolls/bots accounts registration and further spamming?