I was also using jerboa (and beehaw hasn’t upgraded, either).

I ended up exploring other apps and are really liking thunder (it reminds me of baconreader).

Another honorable mention is liftoff.

Tbh, I don’t know why jerboa was released as “stable” but with a forced server upgrade. It seems a bit strong armed. Anyway, I’m thrilled that other applications exist, so I get the continued functionality I want w/o needing the admins to accommodate me.

In principle I agree with karma turned posts into people gaming the system.

However, I’ve heard one of the struggles for Lemmy Communities is to keep people from lurking.

Karma might be a stupid feature but it is/was a cheap way of driving participation - it could help Lemmy (especially at this early stage). Even if karma encouraged people to just up voted, it still raised visibility on the more interesting topics.