Changes to Reactions

James Hultquist-Todd

As you may have noticed, we have changed how we are handling reactions. In an effort to make things more fair and streamlined, we have decided to change the reactions to a simple “upvote” and “downvote” system. These “upvote” tag will work similarly to the “like” reaction. If enough people “downvote” a post, it will eventually bury it.

The moderation team will also be taking a more active role in policing off-topic comments.

We will be trying this system out for three months and re-evaluate it at that point.

Craig Eliason

Downvoted! 
One problem I have with this is I think downvoting for abuse/off-topic etc. is different than downvoting for disagreement. For one thing, if a productive back-and-forth is happening within a thread, I certainly wouldn't want posts to disappear because they received disagreeing downvotes. Or suppose I post a news item which is considered bad news for community members (say, a typography museum is being forced to close)--that shouldn't be buried if everyone reacts with a downvote.

Robin Mientjes

I think the idea of voting up or down has everything to do with whether the comment ‘belongs’ to the thread – so it’s not about agreement or disagreement. Of course, if that’s how people are going to use it, then Craig’s fears will be justified.

KP Mawhood

Rob'in Mientjes said:

I think the idea of voting up or down has everything to do with whether the comment ‘belongs’ to the thread…

Is that intuitive? If I find something funny, I'd upvote.

Tiffany Wardle

Good point, Craig. I am with Rob’in. I hope people will not use voting as a popularity contest but as a way to keep conversations on topic.

Tiffany Wardle

@Katy Mawhood @Craig Eliason I think it will take some time. We live in a world now where we "like" and "react" to almost everything. If we can get up/down to work it should keep conversations clear and get rid of unwanted noise. 

Jack Jennings

It may be useful to specify what kinds of scenarios are appropriate for upvoting and downvoting. Given this is a transition to a less granular system t wouldn't hurt to be initially prescriptive about its intended use

Craig Eliason

So would your ideal practice be for everyone to upvote every post that is on topic? The function of monitoring topicality is distinct from the function of recording reader reactions. It is not only "noise" that gets lost if they are collapsed.

James Hultquist-Todd

This is exactly why we want to give the concept a trial run. 

In my opinion, the upvoting should be for situations such as (and not limited to) : 

1. Answers to a question.

2. Useful replies (I could see a lot of the info in many of the OTVar threads becoming a lot easier to parse with the use of upvotes).

Craig Eliason

Maybe instead of "Vote Down" and "Vote Up" the labels should be "Off-Topic" and "Like".

KP Mawhood

Vote down is quite ambiguous:

a) disagree
b) off-topic
c) abuse
d) I am a troll.

Tiffany Wardle

A) Disagreement can push conversation forward in positive ways. So I think people shouldn't downvote just because they disagree. 

B,C,D) Basically the same?

Tiffany Wardle

@Katy Mawhood also, I wonder if people will voice their disagreement and explain why and have more of a conversation than simply "liking" it? Do we communicate too much and say too little by using the "like" buttons now?

Tiffany Wardle

Case in point. @Indra Kupferschmid why not explain why you don't "like" my comment instead of just down voting it?

KP Mawhood

I think people shouldn't downvote just because they disagree. 

This thread suggests people do just that.  

B,C,D) Basically the same?

Off-topic isn't abusive. Trolls can hide in plain sight.

James Puckett

On one hand this might end up like Reddit, where insightful posts disappear because people disagree with what is said. On the other hand, I think that the regulars here are intelligent enough not to do so. 

[Deleted User]

The user and all related content has been deleted.

Simon Cozens

If we're going to do this thing, can we at least import all the old positive reactions on comments as upvotes and negative reactions as downvotes? It's a shame to have lost all that peer verification information.

Christian Thalmann

Is this going to mess with the chronology of threads? It might not matter for a short "please answer this question" thread, but I'd rather not miss new contributions to a long-term thread like a critique because they were upvoted away from the end of the thread. 

Also, I'm going to miss the simple gesture of a Like or Agree to say "thanks for your contribution, I've seen it" in a clutterless way. 

John Hudson

I don't think this is an improvement. The previous mechanism actually enabled one to express some general but reasonably nuanced opinion about a post, acknowledging that there is indeed a difference between liking and agreeing with something, for example. And if someone had flagged a post as insightful, I always took the time to read it carefully.
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@Tiffany Wardle

I hope people will not use voting as a popularity contest but as a way to keep conversations on topic.

So maybe the options should be labeled 'Off Topic' and 'On Topic', instead of 'Vote Down' and 'Vote Up'? The latter really imply a popularity contest.

Ofir Shavit

I think that the reaction system should be straightforward, you can't expect people to use and interpenetrate something general as vote up/down as you hope they will, this thread alone show that the way you think it should be used demands clarification (both about how to use it and what is the effect of the reaction).
The previous system was straightforward, therefore reliable, both as a communication system and a moderation aid. 

PabloImpallari

I'm already missing the old system.

Ramiro Espinoza

I don't know if I miss the old system in full but I would like to disagree with someone's arguments without voting to bury the post at the same time. I think the Agree / Disagree button is necessary. 

Hrant Հրանդ Փափազեան Papazian

First off: I still feel like a newbie, and am only hazily familiar with the past battles fought here, so I can't pretend to have a very good feeling for what might be best.

I think the previous Reaction system probably couldn't bear the weight placed on it. For one thing people interpret things like "troll" too divergently, so the specificity often ends up creating confusion and misplaced ill feeling. And I've seen some people (not many) using a blitz of flagging as retaliation, or flag from the safety of not making an actual post that others can react to... You can see that even in this thread.

Another big thing is that, as we see on social media simply clicking on a button is so easy it makes us talk less, impoverishing the forum. Most posts contain multiple things, and I'm sure I'm not the only one who has been torn whether to use a flag, and which one. As others have said above, if you disagree with something in a post, explain yourself! Using Vote Down for disagreeing with part of the content of a complex post it very primitive. Related is how previously a member's Points didn't go down when Disagree was clicked. Now, is it worth having Agree/Disagree for possible use on single-thought posts? It might enrich things (and reduce misuse of Up/Down) but it might also be lazily misused on complex posts.

So I don't think flags can replace discourse; we have to do that the old-fashioned way. Their usefulness is mostly limited to management: if a post actually harms the integrity of the discourse or is notable for helping it along.

Chris Lozos

I guess I am one of those people who was never comfortable with any flag system.  Are we all in such need to pass judgement on every post?  It feels like the gong show.  Most people here do not regularly negatively flag others' posts and are content to just state there opinion or opposition in text.  There are just a few cattle prod abusers who flag often.  Perhaps we should just do away with flags all together or else set a limit of some small number of flags per year per person?  That way, a person would have to really think about how important that flag is to them instead of pouncing on the flag button so quickly.

Georg Seifert

I like the previous system to express opinion. Othrerwise I would need to post myself and that would clutter up the thread. 

Christian Thalmann

Hrant H. Papazian said:

Another big thing is that, as we see on social media simply clicking on a button is so easy it makes us talk less, impoverishing the forum.

I don't think the choice is between clicking a button and giving an in-depth reply, but between clicking a button and not bothering with a reaction. In the second case, removing the button impoverishes the forum.

Meanwhile, you can still give in-depth replies.

Max Phillips

Disagreeing with a post, calling it off-topic, and calling it abusive are three completely distinct kinds of feedback, and all are valuable. I really don't want to use the same button for all three.

A) Disagreement can push conversation forward in positive ways. So I think people shouldn't downvote just because they disagree.

Exactly. Which is why we need to separate downvoting from disagreement.

@James Todd, I can see how this change streamlines things, but how does it make things more fair?

Rodrigo Saiani

I think upvoting and downvoting works for stuff like stack exchange, for which one specific solution might be the best answer to someone's issue. I think the threads here are way more open ended than such a type of discussion.

Mark Simonson

I don't mind the change all that much, but it is a real shame to have over four years of metadata in the existing discussions wiped out. First Typophile, now this.

James Hultquist-Todd

All the metadata is still there if/when we change things back.