Ernest just posted some comments clarifying recent changes to Votes, Boosts, Favorites, and Reputation Points:
- Upvotes & Downvotes function akin to Reddit
- Boosts count as two Upvotes (link)
- Favorites are added to https://kbin.social/fav if you Upvote (link)
- Reputation Points have been updated
In addition to that, Ernest stated that “there is no connection between reputation points and sorting algorithms. It’s just info in the profile” (link)
how can I downboost
Hit the boost button twice. The second tap will reduce boosts.
😂
I think just downvote? It seems to register as a “reduce” which I think is the opposite effect of boost?
Allow me to coin the term:
I almost wish reputation and things of that nature weren’t publicly visible. A huge part of Reddit that I hated, the circlejerk-y opinions and same tired lame jokes being told over and over again, were caused in large part by people seeking karma (and that’s not even addressing the actual posts, just the stuff in the comments). I would hate to see that eventually start to come back.
There’s obviously some downside to that and it probably warrants a more nuanced solution if anything.
I was thinking the same thing. I think the user curation aspect is what made Reddit so sticky compared to old-school forums where you had to wade through every comment one by one, but having a visible karma score incentivized people to try to make the number go up.
I think Goodhart’s law applies, because karma is ostensibly supposed to be a measure of how good a contributor you are, but in practice it just measures how good you are at getting people to upvote you, which it turns out doesn’t require you to make quality contributions.
Reddit turned into an echo chamber because of karma, people didn’t want to express a different opinion than what the ‘masses’ have already decided on, because they would be downvoted and lose karma. The downvote feature itself being misused there too.
Reputation should be hidden or removed imo, keep the up/downs/boosts for sorting.
people didn’t want to express a different opinion than what the ‘masses’ have already decided on, because they would be downvoted and lose karma
Critical difference. Reddit had groupthink literally enforced by the software. If you had negative karma in a subreddit and you tried to post, it would say “You are doing that too much, please wait 8 minutes to post again”, even if your last post was 2 weeks ago.
I feel we still need the reputation system, based on the fact that upvotes/downvotes get abused. Everyone always wants to give their 2 cents with how they feel about a comment if it invokes something in them, and upvotes/downvotes give them that power. As long as reputation doesn’t effect comment/post exposure then we should be fine.
If only the boost option exists and reputation is scrapped, I believe boost will be abused in the same manor as upvotes and downvotes do on Reddit.
Providing people with an outlet still to say “I agree with this person” or “this comment is stupid or I just don’t like it” I think will help mitigate the abuse of the post exposure system.
I do agree with others thoughts that reputation on a post/comment should be invisible though.
keep the up/downs/boosts for sorting.
This wouldn’t solve the problem of downvotes being misused as an indicator of disagreement. I think it’s best if it stays entirely incidental.
Personally a fan of a system that only count the last 30 days. It’s not permanent but still let me tell at a glance if someone is likely to be a troll.
I suggested a resetting score elsewhere in here, but I really like this system. Kinda reminds me of Steam’s “recent reviews” score. Would let people have a general gist of your recent behaviour. This would allow people to get better or worse and have their score reflect that, instead of one really positive/negative post in their history skewing their score for eternity.
There are already a lot of userscripts floating around to customize the appearance of kbin, I’m sure it’ll be trivial to hide the reputation score if you don’t want to see it.
Bear in mind that the Fediverse is inherently transparent. Your upvotes and downvotes are broadcasted publicly via ActivityPup, so someone can come up with a way to summarize your reputation score even if your “home” instance isn’t showing it to them.
If it does have to return, I’d like it to wipe regularly. Every 3 months or 6 months everyone goes back to zero. Give EVERYONE the same “badge” that just says “so and so was here in year X” or whatever and leave it at that.
Or go back to what forums did and only count post count and word count and turn those into EXP.
Wait so when am I supposed to boost? Upvotes sort now, so I should usually upvote and boost when I think something should be at the top?
Unless Ernest changed this too and I missed it, boosts still work with the microblogging portion of the fediverse, such as Mastodon. Upvotes and downvotes only interact with the “threadiverse”.
So my understanding is that boosts are now reflecting on threads as 2 upvotes, whereas on microblog posts they reflect as boosts and as 2 upvotes but only on the threadiverse sites.
(Someone correct me if wrong please!)
A boost is more like a retweet, anybody who follows you elsewhere in the fediverse will see the thing you boosted in their feed.
An upvote(=a favourite) doesn’t get broadcast in the same way. This is why a boost is weighted as a more significant endorsement.
Upvote = “I like this”
Boost = “I think other people will like this”
Boosts don’t count as 2 upvotes, just as two reputation points on your profile page, reputation doesn’t do anything.
Yes it does. That’s literally what Ernest said and I even linked his statement on that in the post. It would behoove you to read it.
I think you’ve misunderstood what ernest said.
@NotAPenguin Maybe, what is your interpretation of “Hey, boost == 2*upvote. Simple as that ;)”
Boost is doing two things, traditional upvote in Threads, and posting to Microblog. The way I read it is saying that it’s two upvotes is kind of a quick way of saying “one click performs two actions and your reputation points reflect both actions”. It doesn’t logically track that you can upvote a Thread twice, but it makes sense when you consider boost increases visibility in two different places.
Boosts do count as two upvotes when sorting Top or Hot (you can check/prove this by sorting a feed by top, it will not always be in order of boosts if some posts have lots of upvotes and less boosts). This has been the case for weeks now. The recent change just brings reputation in line with this logic.
Yet. Unless prior scores get nuked, it’s going to cause a lot of confusion when they do for OGs in the fediverse.
Maybe I’ll start a new discussion on this - or join one that’s already running once I find it - but the best way to use these three scores seems obvious to me, and needs a standard to be established.
Upvotes/boosts/reduces need to do SOMETHING. I posit a simple structure and reasoning:
- Upvotes increase your “reliability” rating. This can be used to establish trust as a person who commits bytes to a federated server.
- Downvotes decrease that reliability rating.
- Boosts are reposts to your federated identity (mastodon, kbin, lemmy, etc) for visibility to your subscribers.
Yup, boost and upvote if you want to give a bigger push to a post towards the top. Remember boosts are like retweets - they’re public and will show up on your profile in the boosts section.
Boost when you want a post to be on your profile
I don’t really like this as maybe I just want a comment or post to get more exposure, but don’t necessarily want it plastered on my profile page.
Lemmy might be more your jam as a home base; Kbin’s whole niche seems to be a blend of threaded content with microblog content, and boost(reblog) is a significant part of the latter.
Reputation Points have been updated
Damn I used to be barely above 0 reputation points 😂 I do welcome that change 👍
My reputation went from -26 to 2800 - finally I can hold my head up in public :)
Boosts count as two Upvotes (link)
It’s like he read my mind! I was thinking the same, considering the fact what the boost buttion is actually for
this just makes it a 2 step hassle to properly upvote something, and skews everything upward since you can either give something +3 or -1. Scores will reflect popularity more than general quality consensus.
Does boosting cost anything? What’s to prevent people from just boosting instead of upvoting?
Why do you think we need to prevent people from boosting? Boost has more functions than just “super upvote,” and a basic understanding of the system will make it clear that you’ll be hitting them in different situations.
Now if only you had the option to hide boosts.
I just checked my profile and my Reputation shot up from 23 to 1530 wiuth these changes
Well, my reputation just went from 80 to 860, so I’m going to consider this a positive change.
I like the changes that have been made so far. It’s neat having a positive reputation score for once. 😅
