Debating implementation of a Reaction/Like system

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Or, people would take more time on their posts because there would be a rain of downvotes if they flamed, spammed etc.

In today's society, the worst posts (in terms of being constructive, but the 'best' in being funny) get the most likes. Just like the worst memes get the most popularity (Zoomer, Coomer, Boomer). Anything that goes against forum norms (such as spam) is 'different' and 'funny' therefore, usually gets people's 'like' button although usually isn't constructive.

The good thing about the 'best answers' feature, is that it rewards people for being helpful and constructive, which is pretty much all you need - If we were to adopt a similar feature throughout the forums, we could allow 'Questions' on every section, although that does come with other issues.
 
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You are wrong.

edit: Wow, thanks for the gold, dear sirs!
edit 2: Downvotes? really?

This one summed it up really well. Which is hilarious because the reader has no idea what to do with it. Coming in after the fact do most people agree with the comment or no?
 
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While I understand the concerns with the prediction that people might engage less, I actually think the opposite is true. By lowering the bar for engagement (just click a button to support or oppose an idea/post/etc.) you make it easier for people to join in. In other words, I think it would serve as a good entry point for more casual users who could be encouraged to enter discussions to explain their own thoughts after some time of this surface-level engagement.

I mean, be honest, how many of your browse Reddit, use Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, watch YouTube and Twitch, and post an actual response to everything you like or dislike? If those platforms didn't have a reaction system, there is no way you would engage with them as much. And without that engagement, people would share less content.

And please don't misunderstand the point I am trying to make here, I fully understand that these examples are different platforms with different ways of sharing and delivering content. But what I am saying is, a lot of people are happy with that level of engagement, and I am yet to see any actual evidence that introducing this type of system would detract from the current setup.
 
Opinions are usually ignored if they don’t match what we already believe. Most of the time personality is just an excuse and we’re not all such good writers to have actual personality shine through our writing.

I really don’t think it would make a big impact on the experience here anyways unless there was also the option to sort by number of votes, etc, so it doesn’t matter at all and would just be a cool little extra.

From a data collection and content delivery perspective, lowering the bar for user engagement isn’t a good replacement for increasing user engagement. It’s like hiring someone to count how many people smiled or frowned during a round table discussion when what you really want is people opening their mouths and saying something. I mean this is all high minded and fringe theory anyways and judging by the numbers on the polls I don’t really think there would be more than 15 to 30 likes or dislikes . It would be far more suited to a q&a format where the most voted answer is raised to the top rather than a chronological post order like there is here.

Discord style reactions would be really cool. Sometimes one can’t keep up with how quickly the thread moves and might want to acknowledge or poke at a post without using words and spamming or whatever.
 
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In today's society, the worst posts (in terms of being constructive, but the 'best' in being funny) get the most likes. Just like the worst memes get the most popularity (Zoomer, Coomer, Boomer). Anything that goes against forum norms (such as spam) is 'different' and 'funny' therefore, usually gets people's 'like' button although usually isn't constructive.

The good thing about the 'best answers' feature, is that it rewards people for being helpful and constructive, which is pretty much all you need - If we were to adopt a similar feature throughout the forums, we could allow 'Questions' on every section, although that does come with other issues.

Even if an unconstructive comment "would" get many likes and attention, what would it change? People who are interested in constructive comments can ignore the likes and search for comments just like they do now. It would even benefit them, because its still highly likely that a much liked comment is also a constructive one. This is a forum for discussing mount&blade stuff and people "usually" come here to do exactly that. This is not reddit, which is basically made for stupid and funny stuff.

Look at the situation we have now, without a like/dislike system. When a comment is very controversial, everyone wants to show how much they dislike it and write negative comments. That allways pushes this thread ontop of the 'latest posts' and gives it more and more attention. If people could just dislike that comment, I'm sure that many wouldn't even feel the need to write a negative response, instead dislike and move on.

And honestly, a like/dislike system would bring much needed dynamic into the forum.
 
Recently a poster made two threads. One positive and one negative. Most of the forum goers preferred to argue with each other and bump the negative one consistently raising it to the top and giving it more attention than the constructive one. They could’ve just as easily chosen to ignore the thread or go post to the positive one but it they didn’t until the OP of the threads pointed it out. Using words.

If the issue is controversial, it’s not necessarily a bad thing to require users to bump a thread after putting in the work to express disagreement or negativity. Once people are satisfied expressing agreement or disagreement, the thread dies. If the thread isn’t dying, it means someone thinks the topic needs more consideration. It’s still up to us to decide how to conduct ourselves. The likes/dislikes, in the absence of being able to sort posts, doesn’t change that.

That said, it would be very cool to be able to adorn others’ posts with likes, dislikes, or reactions.
 
I mean, be honest, how many of your browse Reddit, use Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, watch YouTube and Twitch, and post an actual response to everything you like or dislike? If those platforms didn't have a reaction system, there is no way you would engage with them as much. And without that engagement, people would share less content.

Its the "more stuff is good" attitude that I really don't like. Why should more "engagement" and "content" be the end goal of every website? There is already a beyond overwhelming amount of information on the internet, 99% of it complete garbage, and trying to compete with or emulate Facebook and Twitter in Clicks Per Second is borderline delusional. The "intended" way to browse those websites in a semi hypnotic stupor, not thinking about anything for more than a few seconds, and if they do post something it's usually just a thoughtless meme, which the internet is absolutely inundated with. Actually spending the time to write a comment like this is more of an emotional and social investment than clicking a thumb 1000 times, even if it means that later on when you go to show website "engagment" stats to Armagan the graph looks like y=-x, and he makes this face a bunch of times while his PR budget flashes before his eyes:
?


I don't come to forums because there are 10 million people and a billion posts I can scream at and amongst and hope to be heard, I come because there are a relatively small number of people who post maybe once or twice a day, and I know that if I post there is a low chance that it'll get ignored.
If we're talking about "getting with the times", then even the big websites have followed suit: much of the internet has retreated back into smaller communities after the high water mark of around 2016. Even Facebook has re-encouraged smaller groups because of how easily the big groups die off when it's an unmoderated mess and every comment is just people tagging their friends. Twitter has tried to do the same, trying to reduce the amount of stuff that people see on their feeds, emphasise the posts of a small handful of people, and make it less overwhelming. The grandiose aims of social media to basically create a self-regulating global hivemind of clicking have all failed, even for the advertisers who initially pushed for it.

Its clear that the new website was designed with ""engagement"" in mind, but now that the short initial wave of release day posts has died off, look at the result. Hardly anyone posts here anymore.

 
Great, you just explained how the current setup works for you, and why you like it. You can create a thread, and people can respond. That is pretty much the basics of it and still very much the core of what this platform provides, and always will. And to be clear, I'm not suggesting we remove your ability to do either of those things (create and respond to posts).

But you even highlight the issue yourself, hardly anyone posts anymore. And while that is due to a combination of reasons (some of which are specific to this forum), a lot of it is down to the platform type itself. We are looking at a generation of people coming through who have grown up with these other platform types (social media and such) and have some level of expectations about what similar platforms should provide.

Now, I'm happy to sit and debate you on this and have my mind changed. And as you can see, it isn't like I will just blindly impose changes like this, otherwise, they would have been activated over 6 months ago when we implemented them. But please don't put words into my mouth, I never said "more stuff is good", that is something you have inferred from me actually saying that having different ways for people to engage is a good thing (with the eventual aim of converting those people into posters). Likewise, there really isn't any need for sharing this, albeit amusing, ****post at the end of your reply is there? It adds nothing to the debate other than you trying to belittle me and the arguments I have put forward.
 
Being able to react to a post without making an "I agree" or "I disagree" post yourself is nothing but good for everyone. Its puzzling that people would even argue against it. The only reason I can see is some extreme insecurity about other people disapproving their posts.
 
Being able to react to a post without making an "I agree" or "I disagree" post yourself is nothing but good for everyone. Its puzzling that people would even argue against it. The only reason I can see is some extreme insecurity about other people disapproving their posts.
It's not strictly fearing the upvote or downvote. I mean there are bot farms farming likes with fake accounts on instagram. Requiring people to use words and arguments for discussion raises the bar for engagement. It's a little harder for an entity with 50 accounts to spam 'I like this idea TW please implement'. Not that it would matter either way. In a slightly unrelated note, I think it would be kind of funny to spam the forums with Temptations Brand Cat Food to trick the advertising trackers crawling our 'like/dislike' unweighted words if it didn't go against the forum rules. So like whatever man, if someone wants to put in the work to design a bunch of icons and symbols and then implement a like/reaction system then more power to them.
 
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It adds nothing to the debate other than you trying to belittle me and the arguments I have put forward.
look past the surface fam, it's obviously not "to belittle you and your arguments". it's a state-of-the-game (and by extension, community) thing. which is pretty relevant to his point.
 
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But please don't put words into my mouth, I never said "more stuff is good", that is something you have inferred from me actually saying that having different ways for people to engage is a good thing (with the eventual aim of converting those people into posters).

I was being crass and vague but I don't think it's an unreasonable generalisation to link the "engagement" philosophy of web design to the desire for people to post more, especially since you said yourself that having more content is a good thing. But that's not really the core of my argument. From what I understand having auxiliary features like reactions, interactive personal profiles and a little notification reminder are part of a fairly specific (and recent) method for getting people to use a website more. For a number of reasons
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I am horrified by this panopticon being the future of the internet. I think there are much less alienating ways of preventing this place becoming a desert.

We are looking at a generation of people coming through who have grown up with these other platform types (social media and such) and have some level of expectations about what similar platforms should provide.

This is the same generation of people who have largely abandoned social media and hide in small discords and group chats, at least in the Anglosphere. I am 26 and almost none of my irl friends use Facebook or Twitter. The average age of active Facebook users for example is over 40, with 65% of users over the age of 35. The only aggregations of people my age and younger that I've seen on Facebook (which I browse an absurd amount) are niche privated groups of english-speaking nerds from outside the anglosphere (where the facebook age bracket is typically younger).

Likewise, there really isn't any need for sharing this, albeit amusing, ****post at the end of your reply is there? It adds nothing to the debate other than you trying to belittle me and the arguments I have put forward.

So just like a downvote then? :^)

I honestly wasn't trying to belittle you, if I was I wouldn't have spent half an hour in video software. I made an arguably way more offensive image of Delinard a few months back and he took it quite well. I don't envy your job at all, If I woke up and I was either Callum or Armagan I would probably die instantly from internal bleeding. The Magnum Opus that is mfw bannerlord is a tragedy, not a comedy.
 
i disagree
See, in order to scroll through these posts I had to spend 0.2 seconds that I'm never getting back. A like system could literally save lives.

Requiring people to use words and arguments for discussion raises the bar for engagement.
But why restrict this engagement bar in the first place? Its not like we're voting for something important with likes and dislikes, its just a tiny bit of extra info to go along with posts that may indicate a post that's particularly worth reading. Extra information is always good, unless it gets in the way of other stuff, which in this case it doesn't.
 
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