[SUG] Post feedback buttons

[WillLem]

One thing the Forum is sorely missing is some sort of post feedback system.

Leaving an emoji can be a good way to say "I've read this and appreciate it" without having to type out a full reply, and it might help the Forums to feel a bit less... empty!

Site statistics would suggest that there are a decent amount of users online and reading posts every day; we should ideally be providing users with more ways to interact with posts than typing out replies, which not everybody wants to do.

Also, when someone posts asking for help with something (probably more than 50% of infrequent user posts are to ask for some sort of support or assistance), a "this answered my question" button goes a long way to helping other users who might have the same question but don't want to post, even to ask if the given response fixed the problem.

There's lots that could possibly be done here, but I think as a bare minimum emoji feedback (such as what we have on Discord) would go a long way to improving Forum interactivity and help users get to know what sort of topics and posts are most/least appreciated by users.

[Silken Healer]

If I recall correctly, there used to be a feedback system, but Proxmia hit the nail on the head on articulating why people thought it was a bad idea. Though, that was with just applauding and smiting, not an emoji system.

[Proxima]

Link to topic on the old karma system

[WillLem]

Right, but the karma system didn't work because it's ultimately tied to the user's reputation (rather than the individual post) which makes it probably a bit too cynical for a forum this small. I'm not surprised it was culled.

What I'm proposing is post-specific: ideally, we get to see how much a post has been interacted with, and it gives users a way to quickly say "yep, good" or "nope, bad" without haivng to type out a reply. It's hardly an original idea either, being able to leave an emoji or some sort of insta-click response is pretty standard social media interactivity these days.

Read count gives a good indication of a topic's general traffic (although that could be the same people reading multiple times), but a feedback system would give a much better indication of (at least) how many people your post has reached to some degree of significance.

[Mindless]

pretty standard social media interactivity these days.

I'm not strictly opposed, but I think we need to consider whether that interactivity is helpful or harmful.  Are people going to feel bad because they didn't get enough "likes" on their post?

I've had a similar click-the-emoji feature in the works for the LLDb, but I haven't deployed it because I'm not certain that it's helpful or that people will even use it.

[WillLem]

Are people going to feel bad because they didn't get enough "likes" on their post?

Hmm, I suppose there is that side to it. Maybe it's nice that we don't have to worry about that sort of thing on the Forums.

Then again, it's equally frustrating to take the time creating a post and then get no feedback at all. Some posts don't really warrant it, but others definitely call for replies.

I'm thinking in terms of CE development; it tends to be the same loud voices talking about stuff (myself included in that, of course!). It'd be good to see what the quieter folk on the Forums think. Emojis gives them a chance to register interest, agree or disagree, etc.

I suppose a good compromise might be the ability to add incidental polls to an individual post rather than its parent topic. That way, you can signal "I want your feedback, click something" without having to add a poll to the topic and point users to it. They can simply read your post and choose a preference at the current point of interaction.

One way to achieve this might be to enable emojis Forum-wide, but allow users to specify "allow feedback" when creating a post; turn it off by default so it's an opt-in feature, the poster then assigns emojis to poll replies. It's done on Discord a fair bit and works well, where I've seen it.

[Dullstar]

I think Discord-style emote reactions is a good idea; it's a nice way to non-intrusively weigh in when you want to acknowledge a post but don't really have anything to add to the discussion.

I don't think we need to bring back any form of karma system, though. They are mainly useful when you're dealing with post volumes that are too high for chronological order to be a reasonable sorting method and need to get some feedback from users about what should rise to the top and what should get buried, but with our current amount of posts I think it offers more downsides than advantages. Karma systems with downvotes don't provide helpful feedback (keep in mind a lot of our worst posters are probably kids that don't know better yet), and karma systems without downvotes generally means that, as long as enough people see it, even the most vile things you've ever read in your life will have several likes, which makes it look like the community agrees with those things, even if the reality is that the vast majority of people who saw the post would have downvoted it, and even if the comments reflect that, well, you're probably gonna see the likes before you see the comments.

[Silken Healer]

I don't care if this gets added or not, but if it does get added can we please make the emojis you react with the same Lemming emojis we use? That would be soooo cute giving a post a or a .