Not sure if this is a showerthought, but it popped into my head randomly due to anothe member’s comment that “karma farming isn’t a thing here.” It kinda is…just not as blatant and open as Reddit. If the instances grow in size and number it could become a real thing, we’d have the same issues as Reddit with huge numbers of bots, shills, and karma whoring users.
What if every year we zero out Lemmy points but replace them with a [insert thing here: colored bars?] that maybe qualitatively show positive post and comment levels and sort of show “years of service”?
Get rid of the incentive for points accumulation, but denote consistent positive contribution?
Edit: or leave the comment/post points as the are, but make them only tally a rolling 365 day count and participation in the last 30/60/90 or similar. Continued participation would be obvious, but no substantial amount could ever be collected.
If the points aren’t worth anything, then why would it matter if they change or go away?
E2: welp. People think it isn’t a problem, and they say it will not be. Can’t argue with a position that demands Lemmy/fediverse remain static in its present form. Discussion closed, I guess.
The chief difference between here, and Reddit, is that there is no accumulated tally of votes here. Someone can "karma farm" all they want here, and they will have exactly nothing to show for it. Their account doesn't have a number going up, there is no final score that marks them out as any kind of special.
Adding any kind of system to denote "consistent positive contribution" as you mentioned, or any kind of actually accumulated score, regardless of rolling delay, would only provide incentive for "karma farming" that does not currently exist.
Your proposed solutions would create the problem you're trying to solve, a problem which does not currently exist.