A “like” button is a nice feature for a site dedicated to private or emotional issues but not for a forum primarily set up to discuss factual/technical matters. What we need is a simple way to express “I agree” or “I disagree” instead of “I like/dislike” another users comment.
And moreover it should be possible not only to “agree” or “disagree” to a complete post, but also parts of it. It happens regularly in extended discussions that someone agrees to one part of someone elses post, but disagrees to another part of the same post.
In the old forum this was done by replying a simple manual +1 or -1 to another post or part thereof and from time to time this would eventually be topped by replying +2, -10 or the like - dislikes normally completed by some explanation why. I don’t believe someone felt hurt by such commenting …
Collecting “likes” may be appropriate for private social media posts but I would appreciate we could do without in this new forum.
The most obvious way to do all of that for me is to reply quoting specific parts of the message and writing down why you agree or disagree. That more productive for the person who is receiving the reply/feedback to be able to engage and reply.
A -1 is not really telling me what’s wrong with my comment or how to reply
In the context of a help site, that doesn’t matter - what’s important is find out what people think is the right answer. The thing that’s wrong with the wrong answer is that it is not the right answer!
Of course I could split my reply into 2, 3, 4 answers to specific parts of someones post but this is not what I understand as in increase in handling comfort.
+1 is often replied as standalone whereas -1 is usually followed by some explanation (as I already wrote above) which is simply a matter of politeness.
Yeah actual feed back is usually better. But requiring that, rather than a simple downvote, means users are required to do emotional labour and work writing a reply, which can then be judged and criticised separately. Which doesn’t happen with a downvote. You don’t want a case where people are afraid to speak up publically against a comment, and hence it looks like everyone agrees
All my previous reflections were not talking about help, but the rest of the conversations.
Different people will prefer different things, but getting “disliked” without a way to understand why, I’m sure will discourage more people than being able to read a civil critique to you opinion.
If you disagree with someone, at least you need to take the effort to explain yourself. If you only need to do a click, I think we will enable an unhealthy dynamic.
Let’s concentrate on achieving functional parity with the systems that Discourse is planning to replace first, then worry about the niceties. The old forums had no explicit “like” or “dislike”, so neither is needed for functional parity there.
I posted this reply via email, and on the web interface (which I use now) doesn’t allow one to emoji react to that message. One cannot it. Weird. That’s (IMO) a bug in discourse.
@nukeador could this be a solution for you for people who don’t want their messages voted on? For them to just use mailing list mode?
Update 2022-03-28: I was mistaken, it is possible to to this post
AFAIK if you just reply +1 from email, discourse will automatically like that comment instead of posting +1.
I think people who want others to explain their disagreement instead of just send a dislike reaction don’t necessarily overlaps with people who want to use the email to interact.
It is quite a long post but what is the status? We had a meeting with Dutch mappers and they would also like a thumps up emoticon as reaction instead of a heart. It is more neutral then a heart (it might be interpreted wrong).
There’s been no further experimentation with this one, since the conversation end up more focused on the thumbs_down reaction.
There is plan to experiment enabling the thumbs_down reaction once there is more volume and communities in the forums, maybe thumbs_up can be also be tested at that time too, to understand if people prefers it.
Regardless of what it looks like, “vote up” and “vote down” are key requirements for migrating the help site here.
Replacing the “heart” icon currently used for “vote up” with a “thumbs up” would also help prevent people getting the wrong idea about what “heart” might mean, but that’s secondary to providing the basic functionality needed for “help”.