If we do this, I am going to screenshot my like count and edit the picture into the bottom of every post I make, updating them in real-time, just to bother you, Adam.
Teiman
1913
I am not posting this, and nobody is seeing this post, because I don’t post in this thread.
You can link in your post to a image counter that only increase when somebody visit it from the domain, not when is hotlinked.
Some pseudocode:
<?php
if ( $_GET["do"]=="increasecounter"){
increase_counter();
//cache control stuff here?
}
show_counter();
Usage:
[url=http://mydomain.com/likecounter.php?do=increasecounter][img]http://mydomain.com/likecounter.php[/img][/url]
That sounds like a really good compromise. I approve!
Also, uh, you go girl!
Indyls
1915
I LIKE this idea - the perfect solution to all objections!
[quote=“Indyls, post:1915, topic:129294”]I LIKE this idea - the perfect solution to all objections!
[/quote]
Yep, Mark had suggested it earlier and I thought it would be a good compromise. If people really want likes, this enables them without the potential community negatives. I’m not sure why likes must absolutely be seen by everyone.
I’d be on board with that.
So you like a post and nobody but you ever sees that you liked it? What is the justification for such an inward-looking masturbatory non-feature? Why not just triple-click on a post and imagine that means you liked it?
If you like something, you see the like and the person who posted the liked post gets to see it too. No one else. So the person whose post you liked will know you liked it, you will know what you liked, and no one else will.
You misunderstood. Only the liker and the likee see it. That way the like / nod / you go girl is still communicated to its intended recipient.
Razgon
1921
That would require a disabling of the leaderboard as well, naturally. I wouldnt mind this solution - it means the gamification is not there, and people still get to like stuff, which is what they say they want to do.
No deal!
Why would anyone even bother coming to the forums at that point ?
Ahh. Yeah, I don’t like that solution, because it still incents people to pander to likes.
It does cut a large part of the incentive for pandering for likes, since no one can boast about likes (or rely on them for e-peen, since no one is seeing them). And what little “pandering for likes” would remain there would likely become “pandering for posts” anyway in the absence of likes - or do you think there is not such a thing? Should we cut posts on this forum to prevent people from pandering for replies?
ShivaX
1925
The reply function is just post pandering, we should remove it.
When I’m on a forum or social media with likes, I’ll often refer back to previous posts to stoke my ego (or get bummed out) as to how many people enjoyed my post.
This incentivizes me to craft posts that people like, rather than posting what I really think. That’s a dog and pony show, not a conversation. That’s a large component of what I hate about likes, and it doesn’t require the likes to be visible to third parties.
The followup question is, of course, that if more people enjoy your posts, doesn’t that render your contributions more valuable, making the forum better for everybody? And the answer is a deterministic no-- because that leads to a monoculture. You find the point of view espoused by the majority and pander to it. That majority probably does get a better forum. But diversity is lost, and it’s transformed to a circlejerk of everybody agreeing with each other.
But if one is prone to measuring one’s self-worth by likes, wouldn’t one craft their posts to maximize the number of positive replies in the absence of likes? It seems only logical to me. And that kind of behavior does tend to lead to a monoculture all the same, because posts that fit the prevalent culture in the forum will have more positive replies, ultimately turning the forum into a circlejerk of everybody agreeing with each other, no?
Totally true, just less so, because the effort threshold triggering a response is much higher than clicking a button. Community standards self-enforce even without structures that make it easier to do so. Those structures make it even more difficult to disagree with the majority-- something that is already very hard to do.
Look at how much shit Tom catches for disliking popular titles like Halo 4 and Deus Ex. It’s tough to disagree with the majority.
Likes the way AdamB proposed don’t make it tougher to disagree with the majority if likes are not visible except to the parties involved in the liked/liking. And while they might still somewhat reinforce certain views, I doubt they would have a significant effect in a forum discussion marked by posts and arguments. At worse, they would have a mostly negligible impact in a discussion when compared to actual posts, which sounds fine to me, really.
What we need is to get rid of all of the gamification crap like like leaderboards or frankly anything that shows like totals at all. Just have a like button, that when you hit it, its shows its approval of the post you are liking by posting a random like message for you. We could have several dozen appropriate like messages so it doesn’t get stale. So when you like someones post all that happens is it posts a message for you showing approval and nothing else. That way it provides the people who absolutely have to have the real reply, the message they so desperately need and it provides the person “liking” a way to show approval with a single click, without having to type out some pithy message of approval. In other words its a simple shortcut. Nice and efficient.
I miss seeing post count. Not for gamification reasons, whatever that means. I found it instructive. Grounding. Even comforting in a weird way.
-xtien
“You just missed the cut, you’re number 11. So…”
