I experience Lemmy as a reflection of many of the problems in the world; there seems to be little effort to understand and respect different viewpoints. Instead of being curious about opinions one disagrees with, the community often feels almost aggressive. People end up in their own trenches. What about trying to be more open and curious about our differences instead?
Apparently we believe in freedom of speech—so long as the speech is something we agree with…
The stupid karma scoring system doesn’t help matters. When Lemmy and the Fediverse began, I was hopeful that we’d be rid of such things. Sadly, people feel we need to still have them and look where that has gotten us. Are you trying to be Reddit or not trying to be Reddit? Because if you’re aiming for the latter, you’ve fundamentally failed.
I hear so many excuses why we have scoring systems, but none of them add up. People will upvote anything they feel fits their world view and downvote things they feel doesn’t. It creates artificial engagement. It does nothing for the ecosystem as a whole.
Personally, I think the scoring system itself is fine. It only becomes an issue when the ecosystem turns into an echo chamber where people blindly downvote opposing arguments without providing a reason.
Way I see it, karma is good for posts, but terrible for comments.
There are instances (such as mine) which have downvoting disabled, which helps somewhat.