Comment Bonus? More like a loophole for karma and streak farming? xD

I think a lot of authors here on AFF have noticed a decline in comments they get for a fic. I happen to be one of those authors and as a result, quite a handy of my fics have the "comment bonus" thing because of low comment to word count ratio. 

I know it was implemented to encourage commenting on fics until I realized how it's being abused as a loophole for karma farming? I received a comment notification which I will paraphrase as: "Only commenting because of the comment bonus". The comment was deleted right after but I got the notification nonetheless and the user ID of the person who left it. It was an obvious troll account because the name was kinda taking a jab at a very sensitive topic in the kpop community. 

Out of curiosity, I looked at the "discover" page which is basically fics like mine with "comment bonus" on it. Just scrolling through a few fics, I notice people spamming the fics with the same nonsensical or useless emoji comment repeatedly, with just seconds of interval between the comments. Some of the authors even think its genuine and don't understand the cause of spam ;____;

 

tl;dr *sigh* I don't mind people who farm for karma or to continue their streak or whatever but please at least be polite about it? And yes, I know that there is an opt only for subscribers to comment on a fic, but not all authors set their fics to "subscribers only" and some just don't want to. 

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unfinishe #1
I personally haven't had to deal with the comment bonus thing, but I have experienced a /lot/ of insincere/spam/meaningless comments because of people fishing for karma or wanting to continue their comment streak or hoping to increase their comment rep-- so I do understand the frustration at least to some degree. I just don't get why karma points are such a big deal in the first place? There's seriously only so much you can do with it, the biggest things being advertisements and username changes, but those things will only really make an impact if you create good quality content in the first place (but a lot of karma farmers aren't typically users who stay on the site for very long, so their content doesn't exactly get far. At least that's what it feels like to me. I hope that makes sense?).

I wonder what would happen if deleted comments could still be viewed by the author of whatever story it was posted on, and the author could still choose to downvote them. That would probably help with spam, maybe? But there will always be loopholes and people who exploit them :/
lilith9999 #2
There are good persons, there are bad persons. You can see the ugly sides (cheaters, no comments,) or the nice sides (you got a karma point, a new person saw your story). Whatever, I understand your disappointment.
brithistorian
#3
That's interesting. It's interesting (by which I mean "it ") how no matter how simple the system, no matter how low the stakes, people will find a way to cheat.

The particular weirdness that I encounter, since I have all my fics set to subscribers only, is people who subscribe and unsubscribe right away, and when I go to their profile they have no fics, no comments, no karma, apparently no activity of any sort.