I totally agree. It probably wont be something that shows within a month though, so I hope the ‘likers’ don’t use that as an argument: “see? nothing changed…” No, not yet it hasn’t…
One immediately noticable effect, for me anyway, of the hearts is that every not-liked post feels, I don’t know, wrong now, somehow. Can’t explain it, but I’m not liking it, so regardless of anything else, I hope I’ll get used to this fast so I don’t notice that anymore.
Btw, I did also like your post, for the sake of the experiment. I guess I could (should?) have left it at that? Or perhaps I should not have liked your post at all, having written this response? Complicated stuff on a sunday afternoon… :-)
Likes will be what separates the wheat from the chaff. Those who lack the fortitude of will to resist using likes will mark themselves as Not One of Us by liking posts, while the rest of us, stronger and better people (and who probably smell better and are more attractive as well) resist the attempts at community manipulation by wumpusware and simply refuse to use them. Confounded, wumpus then makes likes mandatory, at which point we will fly the tricolor and appeal to the guillotine (chanting “we knew it!” all the way to the Bastille-like server room).
Yes, I have this impulse I have to resist to check the heart icon, and if there are no likes, I feel like I should skip to the next message. In some ways if you feel like you spend too much time on a message board, this would shorten your time reading the message board, so that could be argued to be a positive. You’d miss a lot of interesting posts, though.
Discourse has already changed the way I read Qt3. Now I just look at what’s new and rarely go into one of the forums. I feel like I’m getting a chance to read new stuff but I no longer see older threads that have no updates, which I used to see and would sometimes click on anyway. Discourse has compressed my reading time here.
Anyway, interesting experiment. My hope is I train myself to not even look at the heart icon. I don’t want the lack of likes or the abundance of them to color my experience while reading messages.
Not sure what training is required. I’ve been reading the forum all day and haven’t felt compelled to check whether a post had likes once. If you are here for the content, what do a few icons at the bottom matter?
Of course, the above also means I haven’t bothered to leave anyone likes. Even though I like you all and hang onto your every word, obviously. :)
I feel like you guys must be compulsive attention seekers. You don’t read a post if there aren’t any likes? Honestly I’d expect that from a 15 year old, not an adult. You seem to care more about likes than anyone else, which is weird.
Training is probably the wrong choice of words. More like developing a habit.
The likes are new so I find myself checking to see if posts have likes because it’s the latest and greatest thing. In the back of my head there’s this thought that I want to read the posts that other people like, and not pay as much attention to the ones that people didn’t like enough to like. Having likes for a post is like a gold seal, almost. (I also know I’m overthinking this a bit much, which is why I wish I could just make them invisible in the first place.)
One thing I think likes do, which I thought was happening in Broken Forum, is increase the amount of snark as people go for laughs. Snarky posts seemed to get more likes over there, but I haven’t read it in a long time. Maybe it’s different now.
Change can be scary. Over the years I’ve posted in a lot of threads that had no likes, because no threads had likes. I think you are woefully misreading my intentions. I’m not a compulsive attention seeker.
I’m not ready to campaign in favor of likes, but I might not have even realized they were turned on yet if I hadn’t been following this thread.
Maybe it’s because I do most of my reading on mobile these days, so I’m already reading the post—even short ones—before I’ve scrolled far enough to even see the heart icon. I can’t imagine actively checking that for a like count before reading each post, though maybe that’s easier to do involuntarily if you’re on a bigger screen.
You get a like because The Saboteur was awesome and Pandemic was cut down before their time. Also, that game was my first exposure to Nina Simone’s “Feeling Good”, which is a key kickass song.
