Consider that the emoji-style reactions allow people to engage without writing text. In that context, a “negative” emoji allows someone to react in perhaps a far less confrontational way than if they had to write text to disagree. A far more comprehensive range of emojis is in use in Slack and Discord, and these forums even allow users to add custom emoji reactions. Emotional emojis allow for more civil discourse by giving people a symbolic alternative to an emotional textual response.
I would oppose removing or reducing emoji reactions as they are part of the reason why forums with them tend to be more civil than forums without them.
Related, I wonder what “frowning” mean to people here? or ? What do those emojis mean to people here? To my Hiberno-English senses, means “unhappy” or “sad”, not “frown” or “angry”. means “angry” or “frown”. Apparently there’s a European vs American difference. I’m worried that people have been misunderstanding my ’s.
possibly, just possibly, nothing personal, just someone trying to fit an intended (pure plain disagreement) with the available choices? and just possibly, getting slightly upset with the fact that we still can’t purely disagree, we are expected to either agree, or react emotionally.
These icons tell me, something made you sad (traurig) or angry (zornig). I guess it is much due to personal temper or mood of the day which one you chose. Choice may also be a conscious effort to appear as a certain kind of lad†.
Unless the icon comes with verbatim accusation, whether it was the message told or the behaviour of the messenger that touched on emotions is up for the receiver of the iconic message to decide
† Not a native English speaker, I do not know the feminine of lad, all I know, it is not lady.
Indeed, I am not a fan of emojis, I do not see any need for a thumbs down emoji. I lived under the the impression that in a QA forum, thumbs up/down are not emojis. They are a way of telling the valuable advice from the junk – the canonical example of, somebody stating that “rm -rf /” as root in a *nix forum will cure your problem. Have I been mistaken?
These icons tell me, something made you sad (traurig) or angry (zornig). I guess it is much due to personal temper or mood of the day which one you chose. Choice may also be a conscious effort to appear as a certain kind of lad†.
Unless the icon comes with verbatim accusation, whether it was the message told or the behaviour of the messenger that touched on emotions is up for the receiver of the iconic message to decide
† Not a native English speaker, I do not know the feminine of lad, all I know, it is not lady.
Ladette is one possible usage but both have certain connotations of a particular type of young man/woman which is not always positive.
But this is coming from my wenglish/Leicestershire upbringing. Such words vary between different dialects.
In international forums such as OSM I will stick to RP. On talk-gb I may slip into Wenglish or Leicestershire occasionally.
Which QA forum? We have help.openstreetmap.org QA forum, but Discourse community.openstreetmap.org isn’t QA forum (it is discussion forum - ill suited as replacement for QA forum IMHO, at least without very heavy plugin modifications).
or 
? What do those emojis mean to people here? To my Hiberno-English senses, 
(pure plain disagreement) with the available choices? and just possibly, getting slightly upset with the fact that we still can’t purely disagree, we are expected to either agree, or react emotionally.
