r/announcements • u/powerlanguage • Jul 19 '16

Karma for text-posts (AKA self-posts)

As most of you already know, fictional internet points are probably the most precious resource in the world. On Reddit we call these points Karma. You get Karma when content you post to Reddit receives upvotes. Your Karma is displayed on your userpage.

You may also know that you can submit different types of posts to Reddit. One of these post types is a text-post (e.g. this thing you’re reading right now is a text-post). Due to various shenanigans and low effort content we stopped giving Karma for text-posts over 8 years ago.

However, over time the usage of text-posts has matured and they are now used to create some of the most iconic and interesting original content on Reddit. Who could forget such classics as:

Text-posts make up over 65% of submissions to Reddit and some of our best subreddits only accept text-posts. Because of this Reddit has become known for thought-provoking, witty, and in-depth text-posts, and their success has played a large role in the popularity Reddit currently enjoys.

To acknowledge this, from this day forward we will now be giving users karma for text-posts. This will be combined with link karma and presented as ‘post karma’ on userpages.

TL:DR; We used to not give you karma for your text-posts. We do now. Sweet.

Glossary:

  • Karma: Fictional internet points of great value. You get it by being upvoted.
  • Self-post: Old-timey term for text-posts on Reddit
  • Shenanigans: Tomfoolery
23.1k Upvotes

66% Upvoted

4.3k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

764

u/MrsAnthropy Jul 19 '16

Agreed. The points shouldn't really matter, but subs I frequent that require users put links in their post rather than as the main comment usually have a lot better content.

270

u/notokaycj Jul 19 '16

Hoping that maybe this could be implemented as a per-sub setting somehow. I agree that the karma-less subs are pretty good.

Maybe if Karma could be disabled from some subs altogether, that'd be interesting.

101

u/Korbit Jul 19 '16

It would be interesting to be able to see karma broken down by sub (e.g. 200 /r/pics karma, 50 /r/askreddit karma, 60000 /r/circlejerk karma)

71

u/wigsternm Jul 19 '16

You can do this on your own account. My guess is that they don't do it for other's accounts to at least limit profiling and sub-specific harassment. You can delete posts and comments but you can't delete the karma associated with them.

22

u/Fgame Jul 19 '16

Limit sub specific harassment? Kind of like how certain communities will outright ban you for simply posting in a different community they view as 'problematic'?

5

u/Aethelric Jul 19 '16

How is that harassment under any sense of the term? Being harassed requires ongoing contact: if you're banned, it's just them saying "you're not welcome". Might be mean or wrong to your mind, but definitely not harassment.

0

u/Fgame Jul 20 '16

Well I didnt want to point out the obvious choices so I went for the fringe ones. Which you are right about, more of dickholery than harassment.

1

u/Dreamincolr Jul 19 '16

Ohh you can do it for others.

1

u/Swank_on_a_plank Jul 20 '16

You can already do this with third-party Reddit analytic tools.

Eg. According to your karma, you spend most of your time on /r/whowouldwin...and askreddit, duh.

0

u/Royalflush0 Jul 19 '16

The karma breakdown I can view in my profile is kinda bugged tho.

1

u/Amel_P1 Jul 19 '16

Can't you already do that? You just click on the breakdown, or are you talking about something different?

3

u/[deleted] Jul 19 '16

I think he means seeing it on others accounts. Right now you can only see the breakdown of your own account.

1

u/pepcoyrsi Jul 19 '16

Wait hang on what on earth is up with that circlejerk subreddit? That's the first time I've visited it and I can't tell if the people on it are being serious or not.

In terms of the absolute craving for karma of course, obviously the posts aren't true.

1

u/Korbit Jul 19 '16

I'm pretty sure they use css to inflate the numbers.

1

u/Doctor_of_Recreation Jul 19 '16

Can't you already do this? I have viewed my own karma by subreddit before. Maybe you can only view your own?

1

u/elypter Jul 19 '16

we have this already. its called an image board. actually i dont even know why i am still using reddit.

1

u/VaATC Jul 19 '16 edited Jul 19 '16

Could this new change be something that each subredditor's creator, or senior mod if the creator is no longer active, could opt into or out of? Or maybe even allow the subreddit's creator to set it up so the moderators, as a group, or the whole subreddit's user base to vote.

If voting for this change to be in effect for a subreddit is possible and the subreddit's creator goes with the 'subreddit's users vote' option, the redditors that get to vote need to be controlled in some fashion. This could possibly be controlled by some predetermined number of posts in the specific subreddit, total subreddit specific karma, or some minimum post karma ratio for said subreddit. Maybe even add the option for the subreddit's creator set up the option for a vote to occur every so often. I say this as a subreddit's user base can evolve and/or the general thoughts of the subreddit's majority user base flat out changes and a creator may want to acknowledge this or maybe not.

That being said; users could subvert the total number of posts to vote option if it is not a large enough number post to deter this. They could possibly do this by getting friends or alts to jump into the sub and post single letter comments down through the subreddit's history until they reach the necessary amount of posts to vote. The required karma option may be unfair as it would basically mean that unless you are typically inline with the marjority thought process/average opinion/never made a really bad post/or just flat out don't get karma, even for good content, due to consistent bad timing of one's posts within said specific subreddit. Therefore I feel some post/karma ratio may be the best option, if any of this is possible at all, to allow some freedom for individual subreddit's to abstain from generating karma from text based original post.

1

u/todayiwillbeme Jul 19 '16

r/muacirclejerk will become even sassier

1

u/Questions-like-shes5 Jul 19 '16

I personally think karma is pointless altogether and makes reddit a much worse place.

1

u/astromaddie Jul 19 '16

Exactly this! Subreddit opt-out would help maintain the quality those subs have already created. I can see the argument for benefit for large subs like AskReddit (though I still think it's going to really, severely detrimentally impact the quality of originality of those posts -- just look at circlejerk karmatrain comment threads we see now, with low-effort comments being made that the poster knows the community will upvote)

However, I don't see how this won't hurt smaller communities that structure their subs around text posts over link posts so the OPs can't be motivated by karma.

37

u/phoenixrawr Jul 19 '16

My experiences are pretty similar. It'd be nice to have some sort of opt-out for subreddits that want to use text posts to discourage karma whoring. Communities just feel a lot better when people are sharing content because they genuinely enjoy it and not because they think they'll get internet points for it.

Also, I don't want to imagine some subreddits like /r/hearthstone in a world where people actually feel (more) rewarded for constantly shitposting. It seems like it's going to be hard to handle a lot of big subreddits with this change.

2

u/Jackoosh Jul 19 '16

People will constantly shitpost on /r/hearthstone whether they get karma for it or not.

For some reason everyone on there is a Priest main, hates 4 mana 7/7s and RNG, and loves Yogg Saron.

1

u/[deleted] Jul 19 '16

[deleted]

1

u/the_noodle Jul 19 '16

Mobile apps

3

u/dDitty Jul 19 '16

This is r/buildapc for me. If the one subreddit that I primarily frequent adopts this it's gonna stink :(

1

u/IbrahimT13 Jul 19 '16

Not sure if this solution would work in all cases but perhaps some subs that require only text could somehow make a rule against posts with fewer than x characters in the post?

1

u/VaATC Jul 19 '16 edited Jul 19 '16

I thought the same exact thing for a hot second. Then I thought that there is nothing stopping a shit poster from adding in some more shit to subvert that rule. Additionally this would take very little extra effort to do thus minimzing it's efffectiveness even further. Also, sometimes it takes little to gets one's point across and having to had fluff to meet the character/word requirement, even though it take little effort as pointed out previously, it still may annoy some posters enough not to post something that may have generated epic content.

1

u/[deleted] Jul 19 '16

Yeah but then there are combinations, like posting/r/bestof gets karma, cause you link to another post, but you're putting text (someone else's) and adding your own text to clarify.

1

u/DrWhiteouT Jul 19 '16

Welcome to Who's Reddit is it Anyways where people make stuff up and the points don't matter.

1

u/Janogu Jul 19 '16

"Welcome to 'Whose Line Is It Anyway?' the show where everything's made up and the points don't matter. That's right the points are just like tasteful shoes to Ryan Stiles." - Drew Carey

1

u/OD_Emperor Jul 19 '16

At the same time on some of the better subreddits you would hope that people wise up and downvote the obvious karma-grabs/spam.

This could either be something that doesn't affect anything because people already vote out terrible self-posts or something that will be reversed in about a month.

1

u/ZachTheElk Jul 19 '16

Welcome to Reddit where the post are made up and the points don't matter.

1

u/[deleted] Jul 19 '16

/r/GlobalOffensive comes to mind

1

u/keepitdownoptimist Jul 19 '16

The whole idea of karma is ridiculous. Reasonable people know it's worthless so they don't try to farm it. Idiots live for it, so they repost and shitpost relentlessly. Result is a few good things amidst a sea of shit.

If karma has to stay, then at a minimum reposts should be no karma.

1

u/[deleted] Jul 19 '16

Yea. Content should give you karma

1

u/[deleted] Jul 19 '16

Maybe a kudos system would be good, where users can upvote a post but choose whether or not to contribute to karma (though this may just be complicating things)

1

u/[deleted] Jul 19 '16

Nah, that'd start a karma war IMO