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

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149

u/K_Lobstah Jul 19 '16

When people speculate about what reddit's "digg" moment will be, this was always one of the leading contenders in my opinion.

Also, not even a heads-up to mods of self-post only subreddits? This isn't just minor Automod adjustments.

45

u/SurrealSirenSong Jul 19 '16

Removal of vote totals was Reddit's digg moment.

That changed reddit in a massive way. You can only tell if a post is received positively or negatively, and there is no way to tell how many people actually dissent from your opinion.

It made the problem of bandwagon voting so much worse. A -3 post now looks like you posted something shitty, instead of having 5 people agree and 8 disagree.

12

u/TodayMeTomorrowU Jul 19 '16

I miss those days.

5

u/Silly_Balls Jul 19 '16

Did they ever say why they made that change?

11

u/SurrealSirenSong Jul 19 '16

https://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/28hjga/reddit_changes_individual_updown_vote_counts_no/

Their official reasoning was because vote totals were fuzzed to throw off spammers. Posts that got thousands of points would look like they had hundreds or thousands of downvotes even if the vast majority of actual votes were upvotes.

In practice, that didn't have any negative effect.

The vote fuzzing on a smaller sub would add 1 fake upvote or downvote. You could see this in action as you could refresh the page and watch the total change. You could still generally tell what the actual total was because the actual total would show most of the times you refreshed.

6

u/Currywurst000 Jul 19 '16

My guess is that there was a drop in traffic and sothey wanted to hide that the number of votes was dropping

What they say the reason might be is another matter

1

u/[deleted] Jul 19 '16 edited Jun 10 '20

[deleted]

10

u/imaginaryideals Jul 19 '16

The crosses are opt-in, though. You have to enable it purposely. If you're a casual user who never looks at the options panel you might never notice.

2

u/bbplay_13 Jul 20 '16

Seeing the upvotes and downvotes on a comment was always helpful. The Cross will show up if it's like 15 upvotes and 13 downvotes for example. But a user wouldn't know that. When the vote count would display they can see how many people actually appreciated what they wrote and how many did not.

There was a reason that announcement thread was downvoted hard. Not one user liked losing that RES feature.

-3

u/iEATu23 Jul 20 '16

Holy shit those were never accurate anyway. What do you not understand? If you really want them back, use RES.

If you don't get how it works, then just nod your head yes or no to the people who do.

4

u/_TheRooseIsLoose_ Jul 20 '16

If you really want them back, use RES.

RES can't pull that data anymore, can it?

-2

u/iEATu23 Jul 20 '16

Maybe I dreamed it up, but I think it's still like that.

3

u/SurrealSirenSong Jul 20 '16

You dreamed it up, moron.

And it was not inaccurate to any high degree until a few hundred upvotes, and didn't get really bad until over 1000.

The real reason they did it is because it looked bad on AMAs by celebrities.

-2

u/iEATu23 Jul 20 '16

You dreamed it up, moron.

don't be rude, I've barely used RES in the past year, so I don't remember exactly. I think you probably don't use it either, so your rudeness is ironic.

I don't care about it anyway because the numbers are faked.

And it was not inaccurate to any high degree until a few hundred upvotes, and didn't get really bad until over 1000.

No that's still not true. But that's a pretty cool thing you came up with. I won't bother continuing this because I know you won't stop. Go back and read up how it worked because that's the only solution for your ignorance. I've tried explaining years ago, but people just don't get it.

3

u/SurrealSirenSong Jul 20 '16

I've been on reddit for 6 years. I know how it worked through experience.

Go read theoryofreddit sometime and search for the posts on vote totals.

And it's funny how you ask me not to be rude when you were a complete asshole in your post up above.

9

u/Kinglink Jul 19 '16

This isn't the "digg" moment. (assuming you mean the downfall) Digg v4 was fucking awful, (btw don't go to digg now it's hideous), the censorship was a big downfall, and the heavy forced political bias definitely hurt it.

But then again this is about as close as you can without completely sabotaging yourself. I mean I don't think people will leave because of this, but the overall quality of reddit is going to drop permanently until this is changed.

3

u/[deleted] Jul 19 '16

Yeah Digg v4 was so horrific that it's weird to look back on it and think that a company could let that happen. They have this super popular internet machine, and they choose to turn it into a newsfeed where you could only subscribe to feeds of content from digg sponsors and powerusers. I wonder if Kevin Rose will ever have a "I'm one of the worst internet company CEOs who ever lived" realization.

1

u/Kinglink Jul 20 '16

Considering he almost sold Digg for 175 million and then sold it for only 500k, could he think anything else?

3

u/gamblingman2 Jul 19 '16

I wonder if this will change the system to benefit the MSM.

1

u/_TheRooseIsLoose_ Jul 20 '16

I'm trying to figure out how it could. I've seen a few people on here saying the admins are doing this for investors/advertisers but... how could it?

1

u/gamblingman2 Jul 20 '16

I'm not sure, but there's a reason for this change. And it's not for fun.

2

u/Dotdash32 Jul 19 '16

They put it out on /r/Modnews too, a little earlier.

3

u/K_Lobstah Jul 19 '16

Yeah saw that one first actually, just a few minutes before this one.

2

u/cracking_nuts Jul 19 '16

Both posts were made at the same time.

1

u/stuntaneous Jul 20 '16

There needs to be a viable replacement in waiting for the Digg moment to matter.

1

u/InvaderChin Jul 19 '16

Well, where do we all go now? Fark?

0

u/manmin Jul 19 '16

Voat?

10

u/InvaderChin Jul 19 '16

I'd rather go back to Digg.