Does Discourse support arbitrary reactions like for example Element does?
Could be a useful way to allow participants to share emotions without commenting/notifying. It scales by showing a count of users who have reacted each emoji.
As far as I understand there are plugins that allow you to choose from a variety of reactions, similar to GitHub or linkedin.
Though I have not seen real arbitrariness in that regard.
Hereās ātheā plugin. LGTM!
Honestly, doesnāt sound like a good idea to me at all. Every platform has its own discussion culture, and if I look at our Discourse Iād predict that emoji reactions would be unnecessary 95% of the time while drastically increasing toxicity of heated debates.
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It also wouldnāt be visible to those accessing the forum via mailing list.
Denying the expansion of expressivity potential in hope that it would limit toxicity in heated debates? I think the capacity for toxicity has been demonstrated to not require this particular feature.
Mailing listsā¦ yes. Thatās an existing problem with likes, isnāt it? So mailing lists are a degraded experience already. I donāt see why we shouldnāt have nice things because some choose to use via mailing lists.
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Youtube took away the dislikes, if the biggest social media platform took away dislikes, it means that dislikes are clearly useless. (of course this is different, we can see who disliked publicly)
The absence of reactions certainly has not stopped some people from being toxic, but reactions could potentially make it a bit worse by encouraging people to respond on knee-jerk emotions.
If someone uses a reaction, it would just take a few taps or clicks without much of a chance to think twice.
However, if people have to put their thoughts into text, it forces them to slow down and think at least a bit more about their response and gives them a chance to think about if what they are doing is really worth it.
Also, reactions would add expressiveness, but would it add anything beyond āThis makes me feel happy/sad/angry/etc.ā or āI (dis)approveā? Which does not really seem like it would add much to discussions.
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I support @piegames and @Anomalocaris take on this as well. I think from a psychological standpoint it is way better to highlight support for an argument than to ādownvoteā things I donāt agree with.
And if I disagree with something, phrasing it in text is way more productive than just giving a dislike.
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Iām not against reactions; however, it feels inconsistent with how the forum currently functions.
For instance, the forum currently has a 20-character minimum for replies, which discourages posts like ā+1ā, ābumpā, āI agreeā, and āI donāt think soā without elaboration.
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I can see the multiple ways how giving people a button to express that they are mad about, or disagree with something someone else wrote might have a positive effect on the overall course of the conversation.
- If gives people an outlet to express their emotions in a low-friction way, instead of potentially derailing the conversation by making up arguments for their point of view, to satisfy that same desire for expressing emotions.
- It could make it possible for everyone to more accurately āread the roomā than just likes.
- If people see how the way they talk makes others feel, they might be able to improve their own communication based on that feedback, even if it is negative feedback.
- It could lower textual engagement, making conversations less noisy and easier to follow, which could in turn improve the quality of discussions.
- It might make moderation easier and more objective, by making it easier to quantify how specific posts seem to affect other users.
There are probably also ways in which this could be harmful, but since the overall sentiment so far in this thread seems rather negative, and I think itās really an idea worth considering I wanted to highlight some of the potential upsides.
I see this exactly the other way around. Emotions also make people feel the need to express them. Expressing ones own emotions is usually helpful in keeping conversations productive, especially if it can happen early on during an argument and frequently. It can help satisfy peopleās desire to feel like their perspective is being heard. On the other hand as people refrain from expressing their emotions by repeatedly dismissing them, those emotions can build up and their eventual expression tends to be less productive and more explosive.
A more general point: The path of not expressing emotions in discussions to keep them ārationalā tends to not work at all in my experience, because then the emotions that people just have start driving their ārationalā arguments in the direction that their emotions are dictating. I see this as one of the big reasons why technical arguments become unproductive, hostile and unconvincing, as everyone just keeps hammering home their own perspective because of how they feel about the issue in question, and gets the opposite of validation from other participants doing the same thing, because naturally the people they are arguing with feel differently about the situation or issue in question.
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I totally agree. But imagine in real life you make a point and someone just gives you a thumbs down. How would you feel then? You would probably like to know why. And that is exactly why I think a message in disagreement is way better than just a thumbs down.
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I suppose I feel more comfortable expressing my emotions through text.
Regardless, Iām not against the addition of reactionsāthey can be useful for acknowledgement and simple expressions.
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I like the GitHub reactions - the fact that it has 
rather than 
is better for expressing emotion while not sending explicit negativity. Iāve used this sometimes when an open-source maintainer denies a reasonable pull request.
- It gives people an outlet to express their emotions in a low-friction way, instead of potentially derailing the conversation by making up arguments for their point of view, to satisfy that same desire for expressing emotions.
- It could make it possible for everyone to more accurately āread the roomā than just likes.
Big agree on both of these points. Many controversial Discourse posts end up receiving new replies long after their creation, even if nothing new is really being said (see any of the Detsys posts if you need an example). I think this is down to new people discovering the thread and wanting to express their feelings about it - which is very reasonable. But revitalizing the discussion doesnāt do much when peopleās opinions are set in stone. Rather, providing more in-depth reactions gives a way for people to express their feelings that doesnāt require a reply, and lets the existing discussion speak for itself.
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I just tested the linked plugin with the iOS screenreader.
It just reads āname-of-emoji, image.ā for each reaction after the post, with no context.
In contrast, the like functionality gives: āN people liked this postā and āLike this post - buttonā.
So it could use some better alt text upstream.
But other than that, [
]
edit: Apparently Discourse has a āFirst Emojiā badge.
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I donāt think the scenario you present is fair, because interactions are different online and offline.
More importantly though, it prioritizes the needs of writers over the needs of readers, which I think is a mistake. If we want higher quality discussions, we need to prioritize the needs of readers, and have writers take more responsibility for what they write.
Someone who canāt take the reaction they are getting to what they are putting out there might not be fit to participate in the discussion, no matter if that reaction is an emoji or a written reply. I also donāt think they are owed an explanation.
I see more value in giving readers a way to express a range of things including disagreement or discontent in some form, without having to explain oneself and in doing so diluting the overall discussion, than in protecting the feelings of more active, writing participants.
I, for example, quite enjoy reading https://roc.zulipchat.com/, which has emoji reactions, which I think do think contribute something over there. I specially like the 
one. 
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I think this pretty much sums up why I think transporting emotions via text is more meaningful to me than just a quick button press.
This combined with really expressing not just emotions but also feelings I personally think can only be done using text (especially as we donāt have gestures and facial expressions online).
In what sense is this different? I donāt think I understand your point. Can you elaborate more on that because I would like to understand?
But why canāt a reader become a writer? And then it comes again down to what @Anomalocaris wrote: slow down, think, write.
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Technical point: the plugin suggested is configurable. The set of emojis that can be used as reactions is configurable. If we donāt want a 
for example, then we wonāt have one. I, for one, have found that offensive once. So, I support considerate curation.
SimpleX notably only allows this set of reactions:
,,
,
,
,
I donāt know if we would want to go quite as minimal, but I do agree that a curated set is the way to go.
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My original motivation for looking for such a feature was felt when I wanted to simply express sadness with regards to that comment. What I did instead is comment with the following:
In lieu of a reaction feature I will have to comment with
That was flagged and subsequently removed by staff. Isnāt that ironic?