I engaged in some jiggery pokery to hide some of the like related features of the site, so in the event that you see like-related things appearing and disappearing before 4/15, that’s just me disentangling those elements from others. Tom will let you know when it’s ready to go.
Yeah, I super don’t want likes (I’ve seen what they’re like on the SU&SD forums, which also use Discourse but a much less customized version and I want neither likes nor badges thankyouverymuch), but if we were to have them, I don’t see any reason to limit them.
Is there functionality beyond the like itself? Like curated “You might like” topic lists or something?
Because I think it’s fine to have a little feature where people can say they agree with something or think it’s funny or whatever. I’m less cool with the idea of those likes being used to steer me to certain places – I get enough of that on the rest of the Internet.
That sounds like it should be possible to completely disable the like system based on per-user configuration.
This forum needs a like button.
I don’t generally like the idea of “likes” on the forum, but this whole idea of “likes” as a limited resource per person does have me a little intrigued. I propose keeping that number really low. As in, everyone should get 1 like per day or maybe 5 likes per day. That way, they can’t be given out frivolously. If I only get 1 per day, is this really the one post today that I should “like”? That could be an interesting experiment for a month.
$9.99 for 55 likes Best Value!
Lawd Jesus! We’re doing Likes on Qt3?? Tom with the bootleg fireworks in here.
Basically everything that Tom has been against has turned out to be awesome (spoiler tags, avatars) so why not go for it? I like likes a lot but the idea that it’s some kind of resource that needs to be controlled is a little laughable. I mean, are people going to go out and start making sock puppet accounts so that they can inflate their like count in order to…for what purpose? I think the past has shown that we’re all mature adults and I don’t see why this would be any different.
Like.
Ok in a more substantive fashion.
I’m generally not a fan of binary ‘likes’. No I won’t belabor them, they’re the same one many of you have/ expressed. However I do like how Slack handles them with reactions. That is actually kinda neat, and allows for more nuance. Or at least as much nuance as a single emoji character allows.
The number of times where I would throw a ‘like’ rather than a more crafted reply seem small, but that’s just me personally.
As long as likes don’t change the way we see/read threads, I’m OK with it. If it changes order or shows those annoying “we think you might like this” popups and the like, than nuke it from orbit.
[quote=“Rock8man, post:28, topic:129294”] I propose keeping that number really low. As in, everyone should get 1 like per day or maybe 5 likes per day. That way, they can’t be given out frivolously. If I only get 1 per day, is this really the one post today that I should “like”? That could be an interesting experiment for a month.
[/quote]
This I most definitely would like to try :-) It could also actually yield meaningfull results over a short test period. Whereas the thing I fear most about likes (people just ‘liking’ posts and not really responding to them in any other way anymore) isn’t likely to happen overnight, and thus will not show during a test like this. But that may not be what Tom wants to know anyway, so never mind!
I am generally against likes, but I love the fact that Tom is willing to give this a red hot crack. I recognise that my personal preferences don’t necessarily reflect the communication construct of today’s youth, so I am happy to at least try those features if it grows QT3 and keeps it thriving.
Will we get rewards for garnering more likes, like an RPG?
Because if we do, then I want all the likes.
There is no way to “turn off” the like system in Discourse. At the moment, we just have the Max likes allowed per user set to zero and have most like elements hidden with CSS. When they are turned on, you can run a browser extension to modify your CSS and hide them, but they’ll still be turned on for your account.
I’m generally against likes, and I don’t like that Tom’s running this experiment.
The USP of QT3 is a videogame forum for adults (both physically and emotionally). A like system does nothing to strengthen that, and at worse it could harm it.
I’ll disable it with a browser extension and then hope for the best in terms of how it affects post quality. It should be fine, I guess.
The guy that ate Link’s shield in the first Zelda game! I had to look look that up. Thanks.
If it drives the effect of reducing actual comment in favour of likes, I’ll be first in line calling for it to be axed.
@tomchick, @wumpus, @clay is that something something any analytics behind the scenes might even be able to inform on? Mildly curious as to how this experiment may be tracked from a quantifiable perspective.