https://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/4tmb16/karma_for_textposts_aka_selfposts/
created by powerlanguage on 19/07/2016 at 17:22 UTC
23114 upvotes, 92 top-level comments (showing 25)
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[1].
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[2] we stopped giving Karma for text-posts over 8 years ago.
2: https://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/6p5ef/sorry_karmawhores_no_more_karma_for_selfposts/
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.
3: https://www.reddit.com/r/StarWars/comments/3qvj6w/theory_jar_jar_binks_was_a_trained_force_user/
5: https://np.reddit.com/r/grilledcheese/comments/2or1p3/you_people_make_me_sick/
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[6].
TL:DR; We used to not give you karma for your text-posts. We do now. Sweet.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Glossary:
Comment by incogkneetoe at 19/07/2016 at 17:33 UTC
2047 upvotes, 3 direct replies
Circlejerk is going to have a field day.
Comment by IdleRhymer at 19/07/2016 at 17:26 UTC
6219 upvotes, 5 direct replies
It'll be interesting to see if the quality of text posts plunges as a result.
Comment by ProbablyJason at 19/07/2016 at 17:32 UTC
2815 upvotes, 5 direct replies
**Due to various shenanigans and low effort content we stopped giving Karma for text-posts over 8 years ago.**
And now reddit is completely void of both shenanigans and low effort content! ^/s
Comment by [deleted] at 19/07/2016 at 17:36 UTC*
2383 upvotes, 5 direct replies
I'm a bit concerned by this, honestly. The number of subreddits I know of that specifically moved away from allowing link posts and switched to text in order to prevent karma seeking -- and now those subreddits have no recourse to prevent karma seeking.
I have a solution though -- subreddit opt out. Karma only applies to the subreddit itself for page display purposes and does not contribute to individual user scores.
edit: Gold (?!) Thank you, kind anonymous stranger. :)
Comment by [deleted] at 19/07/2016 at 17:29 UTC
1389 upvotes, 5 direct replies
"This feature works really well, lets fuck it up"
Comment by Lugonn at 19/07/2016 at 17:46 UTC
479 upvotes, 4 direct replies
Women of reddit: what is the best way to make sure that /r/askreddit is 100% the same fucking questions on repeat, instead of only 50%?
Comment by dumpyduluth at 19/07/2016 at 18:01 UTC
282 upvotes, 3 direct replies
July 19 2016, the day shit posting won.
Comment by willsolvit at 19/07/2016 at 18:17 UTC
266 upvotes, 3 direct replies
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.
Because people don't use them to get karma
Comment by CaptainNirvana at 19/07/2016 at 17:25 UTC
14077 upvotes, 5 direct replies
I dunno, I kinda appreciated text posts for the fact that the posters weren't clawing for karma and just wanted to share something.
Comment by codeverity at 19/07/2016 at 17:54 UTC*
1531 upvotes, 8 direct replies
Honestly, the more I think about this the more I think it's a *horrible* idea unless you guys give mods a way to control it. Like how about the following subs:
You are encouraging people to spam and post low-effort content to these subs in an effort to just get a lot of karma. There's a huge built-in audience for subs like that and people are going to abuse the hell out of it. I get that you guys want to encourage good content and reward it, but I'm not sure that this is the best way to go about it.
Comment by hawaiian0n at 19/07/2016 at 17:38 UTC
567 upvotes, 7 direct replies
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.
The entire point of having text only posts in a sub is to prevent the hordes of karma farming posts and to keep post quality high. This is going to mess us up so bad. :(
Comment by Xenataur at 19/07/2016 at 17:25 UTC*
536 upvotes, 3 direct replies
Shitposting is going to be so much worse now. RIP text-based subreddits.
Comment by Aroelen at 19/07/2016 at 17:35 UTC*
159 upvotes, 2 direct replies
Have you consider giving mods the option to decide what kinds of posts (if any) give Karma in their subreddits?
Comment by flyryan at 19/07/2016 at 17:54 UTC*
5287 upvotes, 13 direct replies
As a moderator for /r/AskReddit (and /r/IAmA but this doesn't affect there as much), PLEASE make this optional. I remember when text-posts gained karma and it was a total nightmare for us. We will see a mass influx of low-effort & catchy posts that are designed to get upvotes. It's going to be lots of shitposting. Text posts improved BECAUSE they didn't count for karma. People making texts posts did it for the content and not internet points. The main reason for the removal was the new influx of "Upvote if..." posts. The entire front page would be full of them. Those aren't as possible anymore with the absence of /r/reddit.com but it shows how giving text posts link karma can devolve the content into crap.
We're already talking about how to harden auto-mod to help us out but we'll likely need more mods. We'll also have to deal with an influx of modmail from people who will get upset at us for removing their post that was "going to get so much karma".
At the scale we're at, we WILL feel the heat for this and as someone who remembers how things were back when reddit was even less mainstream than today, I don't see how a bigger audience is going to make this less of the karma-grabbing shitshow than it was before.
I'm really having a hard time seeing the benefit of enabling this. The points don't really mean anything and this just incentivizes the people who DO care about meaningless points to try to gain karma. It doesn't really reward good content and the shit content it garners is why the points were removed in the first place.
Edit: It's already started. - https://i.imgur.com/ZnKaaVv.png
These are just the ones mentioning it. It's not even counting the ones taking advantage of it.
Edit 2: Also, to add, this is quite a huge change to dump on moderators without any heads up what-so-ever. It's not cool to make us scramble to react to something that has an instant change on the types of users & content we receive and directly impacts our moderation strategy.
Comment by [deleted] at 19/07/2016 at 18:00 UTC*
513 upvotes, 5 direct replies
[deleted]
Comment by japaneseknotweed at 19/07/2016 at 18:05 UTC
134 upvotes, 1 direct replies
Saying it now: the overall quality of text posts is going to go down.
the usage has matured and they're now used to create some of the most iconic and interesting original content
Are you SURE that hasn't happened *because* there's no karma involved, and the writers are only writing for its own sake?
I'm not.
Comment by SlothOfDoom at 19/07/2016 at 17:39 UTC
1551 upvotes, 4 direct replies
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.
And the ONLY reason they matured and became original is because they no longer generated karma, meaning only people who really cared about what they were writing (as opposed to whoring karma) actually used them.
Honestly, this is a terrible, terrible, terrible idea. Did I mention terrible? Be prepared for the flood of obvious shitposts, and if you think there were shenanigans 8 years ago just think about how the current crop of shenaniganisers can ruin this for everyone.
Comment by Drunken_Economist at 19/07/2016 at 17:25 UTC*
929 upvotes, 11 direct replies
By my calculations, we'll be giving away an 1.5 million karma daily, increasing the K0 karma supply by over 35%. With the effect of fractional repost karmawhoring, this will easily double the K1 karma supply and lead to rampant karma inflation.
As a result, the mods of /r/CenturyClub should seriously consider pinning the entry threshold to a less volatile currency, such as the ZWL or GBP
Comment by [deleted] at 19/07/2016 at 18:10 UTC
398 upvotes, 3 direct replies
This is really fucking stupid without the addition of an option to disable Karma for text posts in a subreddit. Yes, they're just silly internet points, but that has never stopped shitposting and karma whoring. And that's fine and dandy for a very small set of subreddits that thrive on shitposts (/r/askreddit), but I think most subreddits are going to suffer because of this. I thought reddit was supposed to be helping moderators by giving us new tools and making our lives a little easier. This is pretty much the exact opposite of that. This would all probably be no big deal at all with the inclusion of an option to toggle the feature off for a given subreddit. But as it stands, this is just asking for shitposts and karmawhoring.
Comment by wasmachien at 19/07/2016 at 17:29 UTC
174 upvotes, 3 direct replies
Due to various shenanigans and low effort content we stopped giving Karma for text-posts over 8 years ago.
Why do you think this will be different now?
Comment by malaiser at 19/07/2016 at 17:28 UTC
387 upvotes, 4 direct replies
Part of the reason text posts have generally become higher quality, is because you don't have low quality posts trying to get karma. Why add karma to them? They worked as is. This is a silly change.
Comment by [deleted] at 19/07/2016 at 17:32 UTC
188 upvotes, 1 direct replies
You mean all the quality content that was done for the love of it now gets to be Copy+Pasted a week later for +5000 upvotes?
Comment by [deleted] at 19/07/2016 at 17:31 UTC
249 upvotes, 2 direct replies
[removed]
Comment by [deleted] at 19/07/2016 at 18:22 UTC
103 upvotes, 2 direct replies
Please don't Do this. Nothing good will come out of this. It works so why change it. You're undoing a successful measure to stop a program. Wanna guess what happens next? Even with something as insignificant as text posts history is gonna repeat it's self.
Plus on another note barring all of that it kinda ruins texts posts to an extent now knowing that people are just gonna post popular things for katana.
To;dr No! Bad Admins!
Comment by urban287 at 19/07/2016 at 18:01 UTC*
284 upvotes, 5 direct replies
On /r/anime at the moment we require a lot of the karma whored content to be posted as self posts so that they're not farmed. This allows users to still post those forms of content if they think they're worthy of posting, but stops the subreddit from being flooded by them for karma - and makes it so that we don't need to outright ban those forms of content to keep that from happening.
This change would ruin that entire line of moderation.
At the very least, maybe making it opt-in/opt-out for subs would work. *That way, self post only subs would still be able to generate karma for their users, while subs that use self posts not giving karma for moderation purposes would still be able to function without having to ban all those types of content outright.
