New Feature -- Gratitude

[Chew Terr]

If there's a toggle option, I'd rather it be on the viewer's side, not the user's side. That way, if someone wants to see all likes, they see it for everyone, or if you don't like likes, you can hide them for everyone.

[hyperpape]

Am I wrong in thinking that John F is the most liked poster on here by a long shot? Topazg, Joaz, Araban and Bill Spight are all also quite high up there. Dull and argumentative bastards like myself do rather poorly.

Why are we complaining so much? Is it just a case of unreasonable expectations?

[Dusk Eagle]

I like the current system we have and am strongly against changing it in either way that Robert suggested. I'll offer a quick rebuttal to each of the points Robert mentioned:

While well worked out messages written after several hours or days of careful work often do not get gratitude, one line messages with stupid remarks often get gratitude.

This is fine. The like system is about whether someone enjoyed the post. If people enjoyed the long thought-out post, then if they're so inclined they can "like" it. If people enjoy the one-line posts, then they can "like" that if they want to. Just because you find a particular one-liner stupid does not mean that others do. If everyone found them stupid, they wouldn't get likes in the first place, would they?

Emotional messages attract gratitude more easily than factual messages.

I haven't seen any evidence of this. But even if it were true, it wouldn't change anything. Like I said in my first point, the like system is about your enjoyment of a post, not about it's factual content.

Some users do not like the gratitiude tool, do not use it and therefore might be seen to deserve less gratitude in return.

I think this is easily falsified:
John Fairbairn - Likes: 1, Was liked: 310
Magicwand - Likes: 14, Was liked: 143

Different groups of readers have different amounts of favour for the gratitiude tool. Different topics are read with different frequencies. Therefore writers emphasizing different topics of contents get different numbers of gratitiudes.

So what? It's not a competition.

[emeraldemon]

Done by hand, so I apologize in advance for errors:

John Fairbairn 310
Araban 211
topazg 179
Joaz Banbeck 170
Bill Spight 161
Magicwand 143
HermanHiddema 135
fwiffo 113
Kirby 108
wms 98
Peter Hansmeier 85
Daniel_the_smith 84
Harleqin 77
HKA 77
CarlJung 71
Violence 69
Chew Terr 68
Helel 65
dfan 59
daal 57
deja 56
Dusk Eagle 56
DrStraw 54

Other interesting stats might be liked/posts, likes, likes/liked...

[RobertJasiek]

While well worked out messages written after several hours or days of careful work often do not get gratitude, one line messages with stupid remarks often get gratitude.

This is fine. The like system is about whether someone enjoyed the post. If people enjoyed the long thought-out post, then if they're so inclined they can "like" it.

So, in your opinion, liking is not about quality of contents but about enjoying reading a message? If so, then a contents quality assessment system would make more sense. (However, on other forums, such a system also does not assess quality in practice but how well beginners could understand advanced contents. IOW, beginner contents gets higher marks much more easily than advanced contents.)

Needless to say, I disagree but I do not want to prolong this discussion forever. Our respective opinions should already be clear.

Emotional messages attract gratitude more easily than factual messages.

I haven't seen any evidence of this.

Example for a message, whose contents was written in weeks, not getting any gratitude by the gratitide system (but by reply message / PMs):

viewtopic.php?p=31785#p31785

EDIT: Some minutes after I have put this link, a first Was Liked has been added to the referenced message. This does not alter the point I am making with the example though.

Example for a short message getting a gratitude:

viewtopic.php?p=39578#p39578

There have been shorter and much more stupid messages (of the personal attack nature) with Was Liked but I cannot find them quickly.

Some users do not like the gratitiude tool, do not use it and therefore might be seen to deserve less gratitude in return.

I think this is easily falsified:
John Fairbairn - Likes: 1, Was liked: 310
Magicwand - Likes: 14, Was liked: 143

Ok.

It's not a competition.

It is easily perceived as one because numbers could be compared and actually are compared in the statistical lists. (Quite like one might be inclined to compare numbers of GD posts, which is as meaningless because it ignores the much longer rec.games.go history.)

[topazg]

So, in your opinion, liking is not about quality of contents but about enjoying reading a message? If so, then a contents quality assessment system would make more sense.

That's a different system. The one implemented here makes sense to the people using it. If you think it's meaningless, don't use it

It is easily perceived as one because numbers could be compared and actually are compared in the statistical lists. (Quite like one might be inclined to compare numbers of GD posts, which is as meaningless because it ignores the much longer rec.games.go history.)

Has anyone been perceiving it as one? I'm not aware of any particular spamming attempts for likes in an attempt to get more than anyone/everyone else.

[RobertJasiek]

don't use it

To not use it, I need an option that hides its information for at least my name.

Has anyone been perceiving it as one?

Whenever I see numbers, I compare them. It is one of the major purposes of numbers that they allow comparison for being smaller or greater.

I'm not aware of any particular spamming attempts for likes in an attempt to get more than anyone/everyone else.

Spamming is not the problem here. Presence of numbers is.

[hyperpape]

Whenever I see numbers, I compare them. It is one of the major purposes of numbers that they allow comparison for being smaller or greater.

This may be my favorite thing said on the boards this week. And I'm not making fun of you Robert--I feel a strong urge to try and maximize or minimize the numbers I encounter.

But I'm not sure that this is enough of a complaint. How people treat the likes function varies. You don't see to be effectively arguing that it's bad, so much as that you just dislike it because of your particular habits and attitudes. But other people are rewarding solid content, even if they also sometimes like fluff. I think that's good enough.

This is a case for satisficing, rather than optimizing behavior.

[Jordus]

As far as trying to remove the likes from underneath a persons name in a post, the way the mod is programmed either everyone has to have it, or no one has it, there is no option to allow a user to decide... as of yet..

[RobertJasiek]

You don't see to be effectively arguing that it's bad

In its current form, it is very bad because it qualifies people by numbers that should not be considered comparable.

If it had only one function (to put a thanks below a particular message), then it would be useful (for those liking such a function) because threads are less easily spammed by loads of Thank You! messages.

Since it does have more functions, it is very bad though for the reasons stated earlier.

[robinz]

Eh, what's all this debate about? Surely the "like" system is essentially just a harmless bit of fun? I tend to "like" short posts which make me laugh - as well as some longer more thoughtful contributions which I think say something important. In such cases, it tends to be my way of saying "I agree with this post" without having to actually post to say so. Similarly when I've posted a game for review and got helpful comments - "liking" each helpful response is my way of thanking those people

It is clear that some people wish not to use the system - that is fine too. But what harm does it do? Surely it's obvious to anyone intelligent that being "liked" more often than another poster does not necessarily make one "better" in any meaningful sense?

[RobertJasiek]

Not every user of a forum educates himself so far to develop an insight that likes numbers are not comparable. Therefore the harm done is that quite some users are given a chance to over-interpret numbers as linear information.

[topazg]

Not every user of a forum educates himself so far to develop an insight that likes numbers are not comparable. Therefore the harm done is that quite some users are given a chance to over-interpret numbers as linear information.

Are you sure you aren't starting an argument for the sake of it? I'm still slightly clueless as to what you are arguing about. The numbers are of course comparable, they are a numerical indicator of who has had more likes directed at their posts. That number just doesn't mean anything all that valuable.

What evidence is there of any harm being done by over-interpretation?

[RobertJasiek]

What evidence is there of any harm being done by over-interpretation?

No evidence I could prove beyond doubt. It is an estimate of how perception can easily be.

By far not all users of a web forum first study all context and details before going ahead to read or even write. Very likely only a minority reads any forum suggestion threads. Much more likely there is a discrete continuum from the absolute newbie user to the ultimately experienced user. Many users will see the numbers and, since they are stated below every user name at every message, naively believe in a great importance of values shown with such omnipresence and believe in linear comparison meaning of every two numbers: They assume that 10 Was Liked is as bad as one tenth of 100 Was Liked. Thereby the harm is done. Not just at all but even systematically. Many users can confuse Was Liked values (or the ratio of number of posts and Was Liked) with reputation.

(Number of posts could also be mis-interpreted but everybody at least knows that there are short and long messages and that some write longer messages on average than others. For Likes and Was Liked, things are by far not so easily apparent.)

[hyperpape]

Not every user of a forum educates himself so far to develop an insight that likes numbers are not comparable. Therefore the harm done is that quite some users are given a chance to over-interpret numbers as linear information.

Not every user is capable of understanding the point of a post or exercising basic reasoning.

Even worse, the post count gives apparently objective but factually misleading information about a user's contribution. Some people just write posts that have no substance.

Now, if you had evidence that the likes feature was really very misleading, these would be bad comparisons. But since you haven't provided any reason, other than saying people might like emotional posts. Nevermind the stats people have posted.

P.S. Essay topic: in what ways can emotional posts be of benefit to the community, and potentially deserving of likes? If the answer is "none" you're not trying hard enough.

P.P.S. I see you mentioned post count before while I was composing this. Are you really sure you know how people handle the like and posts counts? What psychological insight are you basing this on?