I hated discourse at first and now I hate sites that don't use it - LOL

I was very comfortable with BF for many years and never thought much about the likes for a long time.

You do the forum thing professionally nowadays and you’ve thought a lot about it, but I honestly believe that likes, upvotes, etc transform the interaction from conversation to conversation+signaling.

When you reply to somebody and actually use words to engage with them it creates conversation. When you upvote/downvote or like/withhold like, you merely perpetuate a simplistic signaling system that is much less nuanced and much lower stakes. It doesn’t add to the conversation, it only layers signaling on top of the conversation and personally I came to see that set of signals as being toxic to the conversation.

I think the effect is subtle but very crappy and I really hope it doesn’t get added here. :P

I think you are reflecting a deeper long term growing dislike of the culture.

It is simplistic to blame cultural problems expressed over years of experience on a single feature, particularly when I have seen that feature amplify positivity and empathy on dozens of other sites. It is “yes, and…” not “or”.

That said, I too would be deeply unhappy if I regularly hung out at BF. Not because they are bad people or anything, but because the culture of the site is just not a good fit for me, personally. Primarily because it is extremely political there, and I am… not.

Can we get Forum Licks activated for the “What have you cooked lately (that is interesting)” thread? They’re like Likes, except they’re completely different.

Yes, welcome back!

This forum needs a like button!

22 posts were split to a new topic: Should the back button move you back in the topic, or back to the previous page?

Spoofychop - I do most of my QT3 on a mobile device now and I never have the issues you’re referring to in your first paragraph responses. I mean if you join a conversation late in the game you just grab that bar and insta-pull it down. It’s so easy. Then when you’re done there’s no having to scroll back up a ton of forum texts to get back to baseline to find your next post.

I still find it much less user friendly that every other forum I visit daily. I hate it.

However, I put up with it because I really like the people here and the tone of conversations, etc. ;)

6 posts were split to a new topic: Improving the “lowest read position” indicator

There are a couple of features I really like: quoting replies and the way search works? Unfortunately both are a mess on my tablet right now.

Yup! My thoughts exactly. When you have likes, I think that it honestly does color the conversation because there is an inherent “score” in conversations. I think that a “like” system makes things more confrontational. I think it is a subconscious human thing that is triggered by likes.

Of course, I could have just liked your post too, but that wouldn’t have continued the conversation.

Three things on likes based on my experience:

  1. They’re actually pretty fun, moment to moment, for the user. Hey, someone liked my post! Yay, I have value!
  2. Boy do they end up boosting attention-seeking and drive-by posting.
  3. They absolutely do enforce more ideological purity.

To use a QT3 example I am personally familiar with, would we have had the quality of Civilization V discussion here if the “fuck this game and the AI it rode in on” contingent had a constant barrage of 20+ likes on their posts, and 3-4 people manning the barricades on the other side seeing very little reinforcement? (I’m not saying that’s how the population would necessarily split, but when a popular poster or admin is on one side of the argument, that’s often how it goes.)

I mean, maybe? Or maybe people would have gotten discouraged one by one to see their Internet friends giving Internet high-fives to the people being dicks to them in the thread and bailed on the discussion, and it would have quickly spiraled into a hate-filled circle-jerk about how Jon Shafer eats babies. (He doesn’t. Ribs are more his thing IIRC.)

I’m exaggerating for lulz here, but I’ve seen that cycle play out a whole bunch. It’s not good for conversation, intellectual stimulation, or community. And there are plenty of positive-reinforcement scenarios as well, to be sure. But I’m not convinced that Likes, as fun as they often are, are a net positive for a community.

Not that it matters as long as Tom runs QT3, heh.

All I can tell you is that your fears about liked posts are not born out at HomeTheaterForum.com (where I happen to be a moderator). We certainly have our share of issues but passive aggressive liking or brigaded likes or attention whoring for likes are just not happening.

Take a look at how they are used there, it works very well. Maybe the Q23 culture is different, dunno.

Solution: don’t let people be dicks to each other. Disagree with the ideas, not the person.

On Twitter I have seen some vile things said to other people get likes (stars at the time) and it is just fucking sick and wrong. Like a bunch of people in a circle hooting along at someone punching another person in a fight.

So the root problem in that case is not the presences of likes but broken culture and/or moderation.

I disagree though.
As we have seen here in the past, clearly moderation doesn’t work in many ways though, as you can ban and close accounts, and then people accuse the moderators of banning people they don’t agree with. And that becomes a whole argument. People get mad that someone got banned for being a dick, but it should have been ok, because the other guy was being a dick too! Favoritism! etc.

The thing that likes do, is increase the internet pile-on that happens on posts, and I do think that it has a significant impact on shaping the culture. This is human nature, as our culture and discourse is often shaped around the rules we have placed in society. I think that likes encourage negative conversational traits.

I mean look at like-friendly sites, facebook, twitter, I don’t think I would hold those up as places to have great conversations. That is what I love about this forum, that I can have a great conversation with rational people.

I’d expand that to say that here, we have great conversations with rational people with whom we disagree, because if you disagree strongly with someone, you have to actually put the effort into coming up with a reply, rather than liking the first snarky response. (And there’s no great incentive to make that first snarky response, because there are no likes to give to it.)

I agree with your disagreement—moderation and culture, as products of humans, who are generally terrible, are also terrible. To rely on them to generate a pleasant atmosphere in discussions on contentions topics is to disregard human nature.

Yep, I hate likes too and am happy we don’t have them here.

Or it could be argued that moderation was mostly hands off here until Tom got sick of it and banned a bunch at once. In my position as an armchair quarterback I think that style of moderation built up tension. Tom was clearly reluctant to permanently ban people and they took advantage of it and complained bitterly when he did. Solution? Faster bans and less tolerance for assholes aka more active moderation.

I was a bit against the great purge and change in moderation style, and I certainly miss some of the posters, but it’s hard to argue about the results. We have several threads now with mature, thoughtful responses to posters going through tough times in their life and the asshole responses are basically gone.

I know assholes still exist, and some people just have a bad day, but it’s nice not to see it quite so often on this board. So, thumbs up on the great purge and Tom actually having the balls go through with it.

I forgot about that.

“Hey, I have this crazy family problem I need to vent about!”


“This isn’t your blog! Stop whining”
+8 likes.

Glad that is gone.

Five+ years later, I think we can all agree this was a Giant Fucking Mistake.

I will add that bad moderation is much, much worse than no moderation at all. By like an order of magnitude.