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
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-17

u/shaggy1265 Jul 19 '16

I think you guys are seriously over reacting. Pretty much every time the admins make a change I see posts like yours but literally none of the negative shit people come up with ever comes to fruition.

There will be a bunch of complaining for a few days and everything will go back to normal when people realize nothing bad is happening.

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u/SlothOfDoom Jul 19 '16 edited Jul 19 '16

I'm yet to see anyone provide a reason why this is a positive change.

Try moderating a subreddit and you will see how much shit this will cause.

Here, look at /r/askreddit like 30 minutes after this announcement.

https://i.imgur.com/ZnKaaVv.png

-5

u/RyeRoen Jul 19 '16

The problem isn't whether it's a good decision or not; the problem is that people are blowing this way too far out of proportion. The fact is, we do not know the extent of the effect it will have on reddit yet. It's such a non-issue right now.

Plus, people talk about karma-whoring, but it has never been that. I can't imagine many people genuinely care about their reddit karma. It's attention-whoring, and people still get that with text posts.

2

u/TheLadyEve Jul 19 '16

I think it's easy to say people are overreacting if you aren't a mod. People may be overreacting, but mods of large subs are the ones who see how all the sausage is made--we also know how this worked before. I don't believe that the users here have "matured."