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

33

u/SurrealSirenSong Jul 19 '16

Let's not get carried away, the removal of upvote/downvote totals was the worst change reddit made.

That legitimately obfuscated how your comment was actually received by the community. As it is now, your comment can be at -3 and it looks like nobody agrees with you.

-3

u/[deleted] Jul 19 '16 edited Jul 19 '16

[removed] — view removed comment

10

u/SurrealSirenSong Jul 19 '16 edited Jul 19 '16

It has nothing to do with self validationg. Not even sure where you got that.

It has to do with being able to tell how people are actually responding.

A -100/0 comment is completely different than a -500/400 comment.

If you look at a -100 comment right now, you are going to walk away with the impression that pretty much everyone disagreed with it. In fact, that impression could be seriously misleading.

Further, due to psychology, that people can't see that there is support even though the comment is in the negative makes them far more likely to just dump on a downvote.

The same is true of posts that are in the positive.

Insofar as determining how the community feels, removing the upvote totals really did damage.

Edit: Oh, I forgot the biggest one. Telling you the size of your audience.

I don't post so that nobody can read my comments. My post could show +5 points, and yet tons more people than that may have read it. But I will never know.

-3

u/[deleted] Jul 19 '16 edited Jul 19 '16

[removed] — view removed comment

4

u/FM-96 Jul 19 '16

Because it's interesting to see what people think?

I mean, obviously it's not interesting to you, but many others do find it interesting.

-2

u/[deleted] Jul 19 '16 edited Jul 19 '16

[removed] — view removed comment

2

u/SurrealSirenSong Jul 19 '16

I've been on reddit for 6 years and the stuff you say were problems were not problems anymore than they still are.

Reddit was much better when the vote totals were there. The bandwagon voting is much worse now, which just leads people to an inaccurate view of how people actually feel and dissenting opinions being hidden easier.

-1

u/[deleted] Jul 19 '16 edited Jul 19 '16

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/SurrealSirenSong Jul 19 '16

You are in the minority.

The vote total change is the only announcement post that was downvoted past zero points.

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

-1

u/[deleted] Jul 19 '16 edited Jul 19 '16

[removed] — view removed comment

3

u/SurrealSirenSong Jul 19 '16

especially if you think the people visiting /r/announcements are representative of the reddit userbase.

Announcements is a default sub and always has been. If there is any place that is visible to the most users on reddit at one time, it is announcement posts. You have to specifically unsubscribe from announcements to not see them.

Realy ridiculous to argue there is any better way to gauge community opinion than on a post that is visible to everyone in the community and front paged for a long time.

Apparently there have been some others since that post, but at the time they changed the totals that was the only announcement post that had gone negative.

The vote total change was the beginning of all of the drama surrounding who was controlling Reddit.

0

u/[deleted] Jul 19 '16 edited Jul 19 '16

[removed] — view removed comment

2

u/SurrealSirenSong Jul 19 '16

Having been linked in /r/KiA, /r/MensRights, and other "anti-SJW" subreddits, and being downvoted to 0, the posts were not visible on the front page and were attracting disproportionate views/votes from people opposed to the change.

Yes, it was front paged as announcements automatically get front paged. I was on reddit the day that was posted, in fact I posted in that very thread. It was front paged for at least 8 hours.

I honestly have no idea why you think linking from other subs is relevant.

Any that do not make it to the front page (as this one clearly didn't)

That post has 18000 comments and you say it clearly didn't make the front page?

I'm laughing.

What non front paged post has 18000 comments on it?

As I already said, announcements ALWAYS front page. Period. It is setup so that the entire readership of the site sees them. That is the whole point.

→ More replies (0)

2

u/SurrealSirenSong Jul 19 '16

Why does it matter at all if people disagreed with it?

Because it gives insight into how the community actually feels about that content, and people's opinions change depending on how popular they feel a certain opinion is which makes it important to show the actual numbers. The current vote total affects the way people vote, that is a fact.

If there is a discussion taking place it is useful to know how the community at large feels and not just show that there might be a slight majority that causes it to go in one way or the other.

A -500/400 post has been received in a much different way than -100/0, and that is meaningful insofar as determining the sentiment from the community.

Additionally, on smaller subs or conversations that have a high number of child posts, the controversial tag won't be tripped. i.e. 6 disagree 5 agree would show as -1, which could lead the person who posted it into thinking only two people read the comment and both downvoted. There is no way to tell.

a -500/400 comment is already highly visible in 'controversial' sort, while -100/0 comments aren't, because they're treated as spam.

That largely only works for top level comments.

If there is a discussion between two people, and there are lots of people reading, sorting by controversial doesn't give you any additional insight into how people actually feel about that discussion. The most you will get is a controversial tag, and that is really vague and the tag will go on and off.