Since it’s been added, I’ve seen reaction used in a friendly way as well as in a mocking way - similar to how words and phrases can be used either constructively or to ridicule. Therefore, I oppose it being removed as a reaction. It is up to the community to be kind and welcoming. I think the word “traumatizing” is a little extreme to describe most cases of its use.
It was suggested that emoji reactions in general may discourage healthy discussion. I disagree with this claim as well. I tend to use and to show my support of comments contributing to the discussion, and my disapproval of those which do not contribute and only serve to inflame. In many cases I have nothing to say other than general agreement.
Even though I disagree with the proposal, I appreciate those here who have given thoughtful and constructive comments.
I’m partial to the idea to create a “pit of success”: don’t provide tools that make it harder to reach success, make tools that make it easier.
I’m also a fan of helping members act kind and welcoming, not just assume that everyone is in every context. Because this is in a way even more kind and welcoming. (With the caveat that we shouldn’t, of course, tolerate destructive behaviours.)
Words can be easily misinterpreted, but emoji all the more. Imagine you’re a person who hasn’t had the luxury of building enough self-esteem yet in a complex world: every reaction can come in twice as hard. And emoji reactions have the extra layer of inspiring doubt: there’s no way at all to distinguish between a thoughtfully given emoji reaction and a knee-jerk reaction, other than knowing the politics of each individual reactor, since there just isn’t enough information contained in the reaction itself. And the popcorn is double worse: by now I think it should be clear that there are too many very conflicting interpretations of it, all with something to say for them.
Besides, with words, at least you can get some reasons to change your mind in the process. Because, the goal of a debate is not (or definitely should not be) to discourage people with different backgrounds and opinions, or to prevail on them. To me, it is to create understanding between people, get insights one couldn’t have got by oneself, and thus arrive at broader, better conclusions. Turning every message into a poll doesn’t go such a long way in furthering that goal. (If I put it that way, emoji reactions become a strange concept, don’t they? As I explained in a footnote in the first message in this thread, I do know that there are complex dynamics and that emoji reactions also have some redeeming qualities.)
It’s indeed not rational to feel trauma when others disagree with you at all, as I tended to. What is or isn’t traumatising to someone (like me), is alas not really something anyone can rationally decide. (One can analyse, but not decide.) Trauma simply just isn’t a rational event. My intuition is that only once one feels accepted in their personhood, one can work on healing, becoming strong enough to face one’s daemons and not be haunted by them any longer. So when disagreeing, even if we don’t feel sympathy, we could at least do an effort to not act a jerk. Be positive, be neutral or don’t reply at all. Especially when replying to someone in particular.[1]
Emotionally, even just being heard without being mocked or dismissed, even if no agreement is reached on the explicit topic at hand, can go a long way. (And does, in this case!) Hence the emphasis on “kind and welcoming” communication in diversity groups, I suppose.[2]
So @ZeLonewolf and @GA_Kevin, I’m sorry, I have no idea about your backgrounds and don’t know how I can be more constructive about this, but regardless of whether you have a point or not, your behaviour in this thread is absolutely, truly, utterly despicable and deplorable, and I’m calling the two of you on it in a polite way, just this once.
I get this too. Note that some community platforms have only agreeing reactions.
Indeed one cannot cater to any odd sensibility. It’s indeed not desirable to avoid any kind of traumatizing thing anyone could ever do in every context. (Which I think, @ZeLonewolf, you were trying to get to with your hyperbolic message?) And communication styles will differ. sigh I don’t have definitive answers here. An idea would be to, if you can’t say anything in a nice way, hold off on confronting someone directly. But at least I find the popcorn to be clearly excessive, which is why I started this thread. ↩︎
Which, in my experience, tend to focus on minority groups, whereas I’m not part of any disprivileged group (I’m not autistic, not black, don’t have a disability, have a common sexuality and gender expression …), so ironically such efforts actually alienated me even more. So as a tangent: when advocating for diversity, perhaps defocussing on minority groups and instead on stories and individual acceptance of differences could be an idea? When done right, I’m convinced it would help more people feel heard. Perhaps one could even resolve concerns of “identity politics” this way. Inspiration: do you know LazyTown? Its deal is to promote a healthy lifestyle, but I’m amazed by how, in passing, they managed to create stereotypical characters that still feel rich, due to how they interact. ↩︎
I was confused by the original proposal as well.
To me, the popcorn reaction is also just signaling drama.
I got popcorn reactions on my posts and I’m like “so you don’t have anything to add? then don’t ‘say’ anything”.
The popcorn reaction I interpret as “ooooh draaamaaa” as in that you’re excited to see the drama and want it increase.
@ZeLonewolf I like how you’re mocking midgard about this not being important… eum… weren’t you the one originally begging to get it? so it’s pretty important to you then?..
It’s twofold - on the one hand a reaction noting that “this will prompt lots of discussion, mostly not related to OSM, and most of which is not new”, and on the other it is just a joke - a very short reaction ahead of what is likely to be a very long thread.
It can do, yes - if it avoids repeating a whole bunch of stuff that many people will have read already, just like is supposed to remove the need for the “me too” posts that have clogged up mailing lists for years.
(As for the “I agree” and “I don’t agree” being “clear”, I don’t really agree with that. Even in this very thread, different interpretations of / have been given! My interpretation is “this person liked some aspect of this post, but I can’t tell if they actually agree or just appreciate that someone is contributing in a considerate way”. I’ve used it in that last way myself in this thread.)
I appreciate the passion and engagement in this discussion. It’s great to see community members expressing their perspectives on how we shape our shared space here on the forum.
The report feature has been used more than average in this thread. And if I were to delete all of the posts that have been reported here, this thread would be almost empty. I don’t want to abuse my power as a moderator to do this, as I would consider it censorship. I could lock the thread, but that wouldn’t solve the problem. My gut feeling is that the report feature is being used more and more when people want a quick way to shut down a discussion without realizing the consequences. As a moderator I can delete and hide posts, or lock the entire thread, or even delete all posts in the thread completely. But none of these actions would advance the discussion at its root.
That said, I would like to take a moment to remind everyone of the core principles that make our community a welcoming and supportive place. It’s natural to have strong opinions on an issue like this, and disagreement is fine, even healthy, when expressed respectfully. From my personal perspective, the conversation has so far stayed within the bounds of our Etiquette Guidelines, and I appreciate that. However, I can see that the tone is heating up, and I encourage everyone to take a step back and make sure that we’re focusing on the topic at hand rather than each other.
After all, this community thrives when we work together. Let’s keep the discussion open, constructive, and solution-oriented and be respectful.
Thanks for your cooperation, and let’s keep mapping (and discussing) together!
Out of the box, Discourse only provides a reaction. The Reactions plugin brought a few more, both positive and negative. Some felt was too dramatic, too American, for expressing routine approval, so they requested a more discreet reaction, which required hacking around the software. Since we hadn’t yet enabled the Post Voting plugin, some started using it to informally upvote posts, which naturally led to requests for . These days, both and are mainly used outside of the context of ranking answers, even after we disabled post voting by default.
It’s true that the reactions have diverted many a “me too” comment, though the minimum post length probably has had as much to do with that.
There was drama around each of these settings. Proponents passively-aggressively banged pots and pans for some of these causes. Getting cited in these threads became a special kind of reaction in itself.
isn’t an expression of fear. When it’s directed at the author of the post, it’s more like chiding them for failing to read the room, functionally equivalent to but probably a little less likely to escalate the situation. Some really did fail to read the room and didn’t take a hint from being cited in the proposal thread. (But as you’d expect, everyone thought they were unfairly cited in that thread, including yours truly.) A less charitable interpretation is that has led to bullying more directly than some of the other reactions we’ve enabled.
Both and had largely tentative support before being enabled, as in: try it on for size and take it off if it doesn’t fit. It’s safe to remove a reaction from the plugin. Any existing s will vanish, but the associated posts will remain, unlike if we were to disable the Post Voting plugin. No one ever pops a bag of popcorn expecting it to last forever.
Will I earn a reaction if I point out that the Discourse Chat plugin allows you to react to a chat post with any emoji, like on any other chat platform? I’ve never seen so much… intentionality around emoji reactions anywhere. This artificial scarcity has really brought out the emotions in people.
On Discord we can choose between hundreds of emojis for our reactions to messages, and in my 3+ years of being a moderator there I can’t remember more than a few misunderstandings that happened because of emojis, all of which were resolved rather quickly and in a polite manner.
I do feel like there’s a difference between fast moving chats vs a forum. But maybe that’s just me
I never said fear though…
But yeah, you make a valid point about the emoji functioning as a subtle critique, similar to . However, this highlights why it can be problematic. Even if the intention is to signal “read the room,” the ambiguity of the reaction leaves it open to misinterpretation. For instance, when used in response to a post, it may come across as mocking the author’s perspective rather than engaging with their argument, which @M_dgard pointed out as potentially stigmatizing and I fully agree with that. Neither adds anything to the conversation in my opinion
I’m the poor sod who enabled the Discourse Reactions plugin and the one who added the reaction after the request thread.
I can sometimes find online discussions difficult. I can spend days mulling over discussion points in my head, and rarely end up responding. If I respond, I can play the same game in my head with the responses (including emoji reactions). It can be very mentally tiring.
Trying to create a positive online discussion forum is I think challenging. OpenStreetMap is a diverse community of many different types of people. An example is how Americans and Europeans can sometimes subtly interpret things differently. Personalities also have a large influence.
I initially thought not adding any “negative” reaction icons was the right decision for our forum, but my view changed. The OSM mailing lists allowed anyone to post and their post to reach everyone willing to read. To disagree to a post you would have to be willing to build a reasoned response and also be willing to broadcast it to the 100s or 1000s of mailing list members. Over time only the loudest voices were heard. The loudest voices in the mailing lists were often purely based on personality of the person posting, quiet disagreement or reaction was not heard.
Taking the case of mailing lists above as an example, I believe that disagreement is important in online discussions, not all voices are aways right. The loudest person should not dominate a conversation. Adding a low barrier to allow for reaction is important. I believe the negative reactions on our forum support quiet decent.
In my view the emoji should not be interpreted too deeply. The person who clicked it likely spent less than 1 second thinking about the reaction. My view is it is a light hearted reaction insert Jon Stewart eating popcorn gif here. Whenever I see the reaction icon in my head I see Jon Stewart and him on the brilliantly sarcastic (American) Daily Show. Jon Stewart is funny and cool.
I hope this discussion forum can be positive, fun and cool too. Negativity kept to a minimum so that we don’t become another version of the loud mailing lists.
But reading a room is subjective and cultural, though. And so is the popcorn emoji. When you add those together, it’s not hard to imagine how the uncertainty adds too. Now imagine people with lower self-esteem and autistic characteristics, and you can see that in practice this actually excludes them wholesale.
I know the mailing lists were renowned for such domination. My intuition is that unfortunately the owners of such loud voices are inherently less sensitive to social feedback, so that a count of emoji isn’t going to inspire a lot of self-reflection, while it may cause crippling doubt for those who are sensitive.
So according to me, it’s not fixing it, it’s making it worse twice over!
Yes that can be true, but the reactions are also seen and interrupted by others. Seeing others’ reactions to a post can be helpful to better interpret the post and wider views about the post.
reaction used in a friendly way as well as in a mocking way - similar to how words and phrases can be used either constructively or to ridicule. Therefore, I oppose it being removed as a reaction. It is up to the community to be kind and welcoming. I think the word “traumatizing” is a little extreme to describe most cases of its use.
and 
to show my support of comments contributing to the discussion, and my disapproval of those which do not contribute and only serve to inflame. In many cases I have nothing to say other than general agreement.
)
reaction. The Reactions plugin brought a few more, both positive and negative. Some felt 
but probably a little less likely to escalate the situation. Some really did fail to read the room and didn’t take a hint from being cited in the 