I understand that lemmy is a great place to be in for discussing our experiences with Android phones, but l find the forums/communities great for discussion purposes. The signup is very simple, just with an email id. Whereas in lemmy, an instance can have several communities, a community based on discourse would be exclusive for that purpose.
Traditional forums don’t get random people who have no idea what they’re talking about stumbling in from some kind of algorithmic main page. Everyone who is participating has specifically signed up because they are interested in and knowledgeable about the subject. There’s also no karma/points system neutering discussions and rewarding low effort meme replies.
No algorithym here.
Also, karma doesn’t mean anything here.
You know there’s an “All” feed, right? Guess what determines the sort when you view it by Hot, Active, Scaled etc.?
OK, but you know those are extremely simple. Not any thing like a social medias algorithm.
But ok, I will concede that something popular could be at the top of a list.
I think what you’re saying is, that many people have a problem with algorithms where the developers have their “thumb on the scale” to manipulate what content gets promoted or is considered popular.
But it’s not hard to find people who are also critical of the purer type of algorithm, where upvotes are used to sort content, and things get popular for being popular in a “hivemind” fashion, which Lemmy does just like Reddit before it.
Do people sort based on votes on Lemmy? With some instances not even using the voting system I suppose it could work the other way, where the client does that. I guess my instance does have top and controversial. I just never noticed, lol.
Yes it does. You seem to be focusing purely on the account restrictions and hidden comments that mass downvotes incur on reddit. I’m talking much more broadly about how points systems influence behaviour. People subconsciously make decisions about whether to engage and how to engage based on how points have previously been awarded.
Traditional web forums do not automatically sort or rank comments based on some kind of points/voting system. It’s just a chronological feed, where every comment is displayed equally regardless of how agreeable or controversial they were. Points systems encourage groupthink and pile-ons without discussion, in a way that traditional forums never did.
No it doesnt. Karma would mean that those points add up somewhere, they do something other than in a single post.
Also, some instances don’t even show votes at all.
Go back and re-read my comment. Slowly. I am not talking about account karma.
Then you are not talking about Karma at all.
You are talking about what points look like during a discussion as votes (again an instance may not even display them). That isn’t karma at all, its just votes on a single page.
I hear that you are saying they might affect behavior during a single discussion.
The one thing very different I guess is forums do put things in order. In this type of forum you can comment in any part of the chain which is probably more interesting when comparing the two.
I still use traditional forums, hell I admin one. I certainly am not against them.
Yes, that’s what I have repeatedly said…
You are the one who focused in on the word karma. I only used it initially because it does exist elsewhere in the broader context of traditional forums vs the type of social media that has largely replaced them. If you had read anything else I had said then it would have been clear to you that at no point was I suggesting Lemmy had a karma system akin to reddit’s where users are punished for accruing downvotes.
Words have meaning, do why did you use it then?
Are you touched? Every single one of these gotcha questions you’ve thrown at me was already answered previously. It’s like you’re incapable of reading more than a few words per reply, which is very amusing considering you’ve just tried to play the “wOrDs hAvE mEaNiNg” card.