Aw, man, I You Go Girl’d the likes! :(
I can’t say I learned anything I didn’t already know from the experiment. This thread was far more helpful as a sounding board for everyone, and I suspect a lot of what was said here would have been said even without the 30 days on and 30 days off. But I’m glad we gave a shot, however brief. Here’s my thinking for why we won’t be turning likes back on.
I don’t like the idea of quantifying approval for a post. Not because approval is a bad thing, but because it implicitly quantifies disapproval. As I’ve said many time before, what we say to each other is less important than how we treat each other. Implementing an approval tracker for every post might seem at first like a good way to treat each other kindly. But I disagree because it sets up a measuring stick for how well a post – and poster – is liked. How come his post got ten likes but mine only got five? Why does that person have twice as many likes as that person? How come no one has liked my post yet? My feeling is those questions – even subconsciously – are as integral a part of the culture of likes as “hey, cool, someone liked my post!” I will gladly sacrifice the small gratification of getting a like on a post to avoid whatever doubts or insecurities might come with not getting likes, or not getting enough likes, or not getting as many likes as another post or person.
Basically, I don’t like the idea of hitching a popularity contest at the bottom of every post because popularity contests have losers. Data will necessarily have numbers that are low. Verbal interaction should not be scored.
Furthermore, likes are “weaponized” during disagreements. We have our share of disagreements on this forum. But I prefer that the people who participate in the disagreements actually participate. Likes provide a mechanism for the equivalent of supportive hoots from the audience, whether they’re intended that way or not. While I’m not worried that likes would change in any fundamental way how we interact, they will definitely affect how we interact. And, in my opinion, not for the better. This is particularly evident in disagreements.
The bottom line is that likes are not a constructive tool for a small community that’s accustomed to actually talking to each other rather than ticking boxes. If you don’t feel strongly enough to respond to a post with actual content, don’t respond. This forum has never had a problem with content-free “+1” or “me too!” posts. And if you disagree with the decision about likes, I hope you won’t make it your goal to create this problem. The attempted “you go, girls” meme strike me as a step in that direction. I can’t imagine there’s anyone here who genuinely thinks “you go, girl” is an unironic supportive comment. A supportive comment is something you use your own words to say. It’s the opposite of a like button, or a meme. Those are the internet equivalent of Hallmark cards.
(By the way, I feel the same way about animated gifs. I honestly wish they weren’t a part of the forum. The funny animated gifs thread excepted, I feel they’re a net minus, that they take away from conversations more than they add. Harumph.)
One of the arguments is that a like button doesn’t do any harm – I disagree, but let’s say for the sake of argument that’s true-- so why not add it? But even if the quality and level of interaction stays the same – which I suspect it will – the extra data point on every post is distracting and of questionable value. It’s noise at best, and it positively reinforces certain types of posts at worst. Adding things for the sake of adding things isn’t a good idea here. Part of the appeal of Quarter to Three for a lot of us is that it’s streamlined to encourage and highlight verbal interaction. Adding chrome inspired by social media doesn’t fit with that philosophy.
Another argument is that it gives people an easy way to approve of a post. But if you approve of a post, say so, and furthermore explain why you approve. That’s how conversations happen. People building on things other people say, often in agreement or disagreement. If you don’t want to participate in the conversation but still want to express agreement or approval, send a PM.
Some folks have said a like is the equivalent of a nod during a spoken conversation. But these aren’t spoken conversations. In different mediums, we talk to each other differently, we use different social cues, we adopt different tones. Texting isn’t YouTube comments, which aren’t phone calls, which isn’t a Skype chat, which isn’t a Power Point presentation, which isn’t a support group, which isn’t a family member’s Facebook page, which isn’t Twitter, which isn’t Chatroulette, which isn’t Usenet. None of these is a face-to-face conversation where you might nod and interrupt each other and express subtext with vocal inflection and make eye contact and nod. And none of these is an online message board comprised of a few hundred people who like hanging out with each other to talk about a variety of topics on any given day. There aren’t many places like Quarter to Three left, and as such, I feel it’s important to preserve the things that make us distinct. It is my opinion that to some degree, likes would compromise that.
So that’s my thinking. The conversation is certainly free to continue, and I’m happy to have people take issue with what I’ve said, but for the foreseeable future, we won’t be using likes.
-Tom
I very much appreciate the thoughtful post, Tom.
And, as always, QT3 will remain what it is. We’ll all be fine.
e: I particularly like (heh) this bit:
Well said.
Very well said.
For just a split second I was sure this said Chaturbate and felt a giggle oncoming in the middle of a thoughtful, well-reasoned post.
While I regret I will never be able to Win Qt3, I certainly can’t imagine that I’m going to spend any less time here than I did during the 9 years and 1 month I was around pre-Likes :)
See? Some things never change, Likes or no! @wumpus always finds an adorable way to be an insufferable git about something :-D
The very same Supreme Court that handed down the “separate but equal” clause of Plessy v. Ferguson, huh?
If we’d had just one Justice–one John Marshall Harlan–racial injustice in this country would have been dealt an incredible blow almost 60 years early!
Hah-hah!
Seconded, motion carries.
I love this thread.
Ultimately, none of this shit matters. No one’s gonna throw a tantrum and leave because of no likes.
What really matters, is that I won the forum, and now it’s over, so no one can ever take my title away.
I’m pretty sure if I eat your heart I get all your likes.
Or eat your plus sign, depending on the theme.
Have you never read a Tom Chick review?
No. There can only be one right, so this is about using a sword to chop off his head. I’ll let you take out all the other leaders, and then invite you over to my house… you can leave your sword behind ;-)
I would like to thank Tom for explaining his reasoning so thoroughly and thoughtfully-- he expressed my thoughts on the issue exactly.
Yes, my feeling is that much of the stuff that crept in from Facebook and reddit is a net positive.
- Avatars make it easy to visually distinguish who’s making a post. Your brain mentally associates those people with their avatars. I can’t think of a negative there, beyond the cantankerous “but usenet didn’t have 'em!” bit.
- Spoiler tags have obvious applications. They’re immediately useful. No real downside there either.
All the attempts to auto-moderate or gamify conversation are justifiable in a massive community. You can’t have something like reddit (or earlier, slashdot) without voting-- it wouldn’t be possible to have a conversation because 1000s of random jerkoffs would poison the waters. They make sense, there. But in a small community they can have a deleterious effect and they just aren’t necessary.
The one pro-like bit in this entire thread that resonated from me was from a couple people who felt like their posts were ignored, and they appreciated the likes to see that they were seen, and part of the community. And I get that. Sometimes I make what I feel is a particularly great cutting post, or I spend a couple minutes making what I felt to be hilarious pictures, and nobody replies or indicates they enjoyed them, and that’s a bummer.
That happened earlier in this thread, actually.That makes me face that maybe-- just maybe-- I’m not as brilliant and comically gifted and golly darnit special as my mom always said I was. And well, so be it. I’m an adult, I can take that. I do the best I can and fuck y’all anyway!
Thanks, buddy!
I am a little bummed that “fuck you” as a replacement for likes never took off.
C’mon, “you go girl” is way more fun/encouraging.
While this is true, and I have found Qt3 to be my favorite online community ever. Like Tom said, if Likes are added, then absence of likes on posts = lack of empathy, or at least the appearance of that. And that sucks too.
HA! True. I am sure Tom’s reviews, if they were posts in a large gaming forum, would not garner a lot of likes, as he often is very critical of things that have a massive appeal. And while I often disagree with him, and his opinions, I enjoy reading his well reasoned argumentation. And, maybe, if there was a system that quantified likes on reviews, If I was new,it could be possible that I would would notice the lack of likes and decide not to read.
I don’t know how that with everything that we have seen with facebook and twitter, and the shifting tone of political discourse as a world, anyone could think that likes/upvotes/favorites/retweets could be something that helps discussion. Even if I know that our community would be mature enough to handle likes, I hate them so much for what they have turned social media into.
But anyway, I really don’t like likes, and I really like all of you. Which is why I spend far too much of my day posting on here. We will all be just fine.
This. Also, it’s pretty much the only sane one I know. Granted, I don’t know that many, but because of Qt3 I don’t feel the need to go looking.
The mask slips, and the truth is revealed. It wasn’t enough for wumpus to get Qt3 on to his software, now he wants to control it. Sure ‘democracy’, then elected leaders, then… a new authoritarianism when trumpus wumpus slips into the the Qt3 oval office.