Reactions: How insightful is Insightful?

Stephen Coles

I’m considering a consolidation of the Reaction options below each post. Showing too many options is unnecessarily complex and lessens the effect of any individual Reaction. I can see justification for most of them because they have distinct meanings: You can Like something without Agreeing with it, for example. But if we were to drop anything I think Insightful could go, because its meaning generally overlaps with Agree or Like. Through some quick research I also found that Insightful is used far less often than the other positive Reactions.

I don’t want to make this change without your input, though. So if you have a strong opinion either way, let me know.

Nick Shinn

FWIW, I almost never click any of those buttons.

Stephen Coles

That’s fine. They aren’t for everybody. You can read some of the pros and cons from last year’s discussion. It seems that most people find them useful, especially for responding to a post in a low-impact way when a written response is unnecessary.

George Thomas

Not necessarily a strong opinion, but in my mind Insightful would be appropriate when someone has posted information of creative or technical value that has enlightened another.

If it were my choice, I would remove Like because Agree and Like are pretty much the same thing, and Like to me approaches trite because it is overused.

Like Nick, I don't use any of them that often.

Chris Lozos

Actually, I use insightful for the exact reasons George stated. I do think "Like" can go, without question.

Ofir Shavit

I think they all should stay

Göran Söderström

I think they all can go

Ramiro Espinoza

I think they all should stay

Lars Schwarz

I think they all could go and having something like a »best answer« button (obviously only available to the original creator of the post) might help.

»Like« in my honest opinion is something like a Facebook trademark now and you never can be sure what happens when you click something that says »like«.

The »agree« and »disagree« functions seem o.k., but i'm not aware of their function at all, except the fact that you have to hover them to see what's the answer most people agreed to.

If those metrics/numbers would be visible without hovering and in a stackoverflow.com manner (number of votes/agrees visible in front of each comment) they might help. This of course assumes a question was posted. For regular discussion that don't require a »best anwer« or similar it's a different story.

Craig Eliason

Through some quick research I also found that Insightful is used far less often than the other positive Reactions.

I'd counter that's as it should be. People post insightful things less often than they post things I agree with or like!
I think they all should stay. I certainly disagree that "like" and "agree" are redundant, and in fact I think "like" is the most indispensable of the reactions.

Stuart Sandler

I'd agree all of 'em should stay - I also like the idea that I can note something as insightful (to me) whether or not I agree or disagree with it but is it important to this forum audience if I find something insightful or not?

Stephen Coles

Lars, the simple up/down reactions you describe can be useful in a pure Q&A forum like Quora where the original poster is seeking a specific or "Best Answer", but most of the discussions here are very different.

Mark Simonson

I think they should all stay. If you don't like them, you don't have to use them, and they are invisible in desktop browsers until you mouse over them.

I can think of a few more that might be useful, but there's always the workaround of simply replying.

Ben Blom

The relevance of the Reactions has dropped since they are not visible all the time anymore. Now they live in an ‘underworld’, where they are only seen by those who seek them. I think this is a fine compromise between keeping them and removing them. I would keep them all in their ‘underworld’, although I like “Like” the least.

Stephen Coles

Ok. It seems clear there is no consensus for removing any particular reaction. We’ll leave it as it is for now.

[Deleted User]

The user and all related content has been deleted.

George Thomas

They were visible at one time and James changed them, I believe after polling members for their preference.

Stephen Coles

Correct.

Ofir Shavit

Keeping them visible will harm the cleanness of conversations. plus considering that many members don't like/want to use them at all it is far better to keep them collapsed.
If anything i'd grey out the black flag because it's dragging too much attention to my taste, to opacity 0.4 or so, if possible.

John Hudson

I think you should keep the 'Insightful' flag. I think it's actually the only one that is particularly useful, indicating not simply that someone likes or agrees with a post, but that they found it useful in some way or thought provoking. Frankly, I mostly don't care whether people like or dislike a post, or agree with it or not. But if someone has flagged something as Insightful, I'll be sure to read it (even if my response is then to dislike or disagree with it).

Scott-Martin Kosofsky

I agree with with John Hudson and Mark Simonson on this--and all who agreed with them, or found them insightful or likable or agreeable. The system works quite well, by and large.

LeMo aka PatternMan aka Frank E Blokland

Shortly an unauthorized test will run at this TD topic to find out whether the flag system works properly.

Jay Langly

Like seems the least useful...

Craig Eliason

Any chances of a Redundant (or We've Been Through This Before) reaction? :-|

Mark Simonson

The only problem I have with this system is that I can usually only see counts on my iPhone. On the desktop browser, mousing over the reactions displays a little pop up list of who is reacting, which is sometimes good to know. On a touch based device, mouse-over doesn't exist and I've never found a reliable way to see who is reacting. Sometimes it works to tap once, and then tapping a second time to add my own reaction, but often tapping once adds my reaction (usually not what I intended), instead of displaying the list of names.

Chris Lozos

Redundant seems as though it would not help unless the link to the previous thread was included. Since this would be too hard to implement automatically, it might not be worth the effort?

Choz Cunningham

I don't mind the variety of responses available. I am not likely to use "disagree" because I feel I should either write why I disagree, or be polite and not comment.

Relatedly (I hope), I feel that it is unintuitive that "Flag" is the one reaction that always shows. It seems like the marker for the collection of reactions should be a neutral word, not one of the reactions itself. Perhaps a mediumish grey "Respond ▶" or "React ▶" might be more friendly? 

Further, it triggers not only the fly-out of other reactions, but also creates a drop box of sub-reactions; this seems overly complex. (Also, are "abuse" and "troll" that different; do they garner different responses from the moderators?)

I do want to finish by saying I love this site, both for its quality of posters and for its clean and quick presentation.

Nick Shinn

I almost never look at tags, or make them.

Chris Lozos

I prefer not to know what others think about someone's post before I read it to keep a less biased look at what has been written.

Ray Larabie

Being able to review the tags is really handy. Especially if, like me, you're losing your memory and you can't remember who you hate anymore.

Hrant Հրանդ Փափազեան Papazian

Although the recent post by Craig Rozynski* was edited and the "Breaking the Rules" (formerly "Abuse") flag(s) removed, I would ask the moderators not to remove the concerted dogpile of flags that a past post of mine received – even though it was deleted in its entirety. I would not want to be party to censorship.

* https://typedrawers.com/discussion/3855/you-are-slashing-your-way-into-the-papa-new-guinean-jungle