Wedge
Public area => The Pub => Features => Topic started by: Nao on July 5th, 2012, 11:22 AM
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Can we, should we, have Like types..?
I was on a French website yesterday, and noticed that it had an awful lot of Like buttons. Basically they all started with "This made me...", and then a list of verbs matching your emotion: "smile", "cry", "upset", "uncomfortable", "angry", things like that... Similarly, the latest .Net issue has a feature about someone writing a Chrome plugin to be able to say that you 'cried' at a YouTube video.
The whole point of this is to give you the ability to then search for the things that made people laugh, or cry, or react in any way different from just 'liking' it, basically just as if the users were adding 'personal tags'.
One of these things can be achieved through the playlist system in Wedge. For instance we could add playlist types and then let people create their playlists from a list of templates like "Favorites", "Pictures of places I should visit", "Videos that made me cry", etc, and then one could navigate through all similarly-named playlists and write plugins to sort items by most times seen in a specific playlist etc. Whatever.
Of course, playlists are only on a topic-level, while likes are on a message-level, so it's not the exact same thing. So I figured, it's hard to do that with playlists (although doable), so maybe with likes...
Maybe it should only be a plugin of course, like, adding emotion types through a plugin, but in the end maybe we should 'simply' accomodate for like types in the database already (i.e. a 'type' enum field), making it easier to add types later on.
What do you think...?
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I've seen it elsewhere and while I find it interesting, I can't shake the feeling it should be a plugin rather than core.
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The way I saw it implemented sucked because it had all these buttons... (And they even showed up for guests. Incentive to register...? What? Why would I register to tell the world I'm "concerned" by the post I just read? I can understand one would want to do that if registered, but it's in no way a good reason to register...)
Obviously it has to be done through the (future) mini-menu for Likes...
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Uhm.. I prefer the simple like.. I wouldn't complicate it much.
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It certainly can be done, and I've seen it done even for SMF with this(http://www.simplemachines.org/community/index.php?topic=475922.msg3359178#msg3359178), but as far as being a guest incentive, no.
I'm not entirely convinced this should be in the core though, minimenu or not. Simple like in the core, something like this as a plugin.
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Well, as I said, it's the kind of thing that can be implemented through playlists (and plugins), but I was asking if we should modify the likes system to allow for more like types to be plugged in later through plugins or core additions...
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More types of content to be liked, sure, but not more types of likes through the core. Were I to implement it, I'd sidestep the entire current system and implement it separately because there are other things to be considered in terms of queries.
In fact this is probably the most compelling reason to have a master on/off switch for likes as it currently stands so the plugin could override behaviour entirely.
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I'm not sure about using the Like button for playlists, it would only work for a limited case of very structured content (i.e. photo albums, music library, media cache, etc.)
But for generally conveying mood, maybe there's a simpler way. Have the "like" button pop open a dialog box that lets the reader Like/Dislike the post, leave a comment, and also award karma/respect (for user ranking).
The "like with comment" would let people say why they liked the post, or could be used to convey a "short" response when they didn't want to write a full reply. Forum user's LOVE the PDA (Public Display of Affection), since it's clear to the entire community who's contributing content, who's been thanked for it.
I attached a few screen shots of something similar to this to convey the idea.
dwx
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I do not want a full-on reputation system in the core, which is what you're proposing. I'm not against the idea in principle, and there are certainly merits for it for some kinds of communities - but as I see it, more communities would benefit from keeping it leaner rather than more thorough, and I'd much rather see something as thorough as what amounts to a full on rep system be a plugin.
There is also a secondary consideration here, my gut is telling me that anyone who wants a rep system as complex as this is also going to want to seriously customise it, and to me that also says it's going to be a support issue. Putting it into a plugin keeps is more self contained.
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I do not want a full-on reputation system in the core, which is what you're proposing. I'm not against the idea in principle, and there are certainly merits for it for some kinds of communities - but as I see it, more communities would benefit from keeping it leaner rather than more thorough, and I'd much rather see something as thorough as what amounts to a full on rep system be a plugin.
There is also a secondary consideration here, my gut is telling me that anyone who wants a rep system as complex as this is also going to want to seriously customise it, and to me that also says it's going to be a support issue. Putting it into a plugin keeps is more self contained.
You bring up a very interesting point, the purpose of the forum will heavily influence the form of any "like" systems. It would probably be best to have the hooks for the activation button and the Public Display of Like Comments, and let the specific "like" pluggin chosen do the work. This way, the forum owner can chose a "mood" based like system (which Nao started the discussion with), or a reputation based like system (like I proposed) or a simple Digg style "thumbs up/down" system, or something completely different and not imagined before.
I do think that the admin should pick ONE "like" systems to install, and that the interfaces are well defined, but don't assume much about the "like" functionality.
dwx
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I agree. I think the whole "like" system should be a plug in. And what I described was definitely functionality that keys off a reputation system.
However, I'm well aware that going much further than the base like system that is currently implemented is headed firmly into plugin territory.You bring up a very interesting point, the purpose of the forum will heavily influence the form of any "like" systems. It would probably be best to have the hooks for the activation button and the Public Display of Like Comments, and let the specific "like" pluggin chosen do the work
I do think that the admin should pick ONE "like" systems to install, and that the interfaces are well defined, but don't assume much about the "like" functionality.
Imagine you're looking to choose a forum system: are you seriously going to choose a forum system that has absolutely zero reputation systems built in?
(Let me clarify this. Back in 2006, I started out running a forum with PunBB. The *sole* reason I moved to SMF all those years ago, and the seed for everything here today is because PunBB did not have something as 'simple' as polls built in, and already on this forum, Likes gets more use than polls.)
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I'm coming from vbulletin, so I'm not familiar with which features are core to SMF. In the vbulletin (and vanilla) world, there are some addons that are included by default, but are not core.
I have a specific use in mind, and DESPERATELY want a reputation system that displays PDA and allows users to advance into different user groups (with additional powers and privileges), and the "like" system is how the community awards reputation and recognition. The usergroup and user access restrictions to photo albums that's already built into wedge feed right into this, since attaining a higher rank would get a user access to more exclusive content, etc.
This is a LOT different than the category defining "like" system that Nao suggested as a thread starter.
I wasn't actually suggesting that there be NO reputation system, but more like a choice of the one that fits your application.
dwx
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PDA...?
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Public Display of Affection.
SMF's system for such is user-level karma (users can + or - another user's karma once per day), which as you can imagine does not work all that well, and we considered it would be much better to tie it into posts rather than to users, per se - what you see here as far as likes go (at the bottom of posts) is what Wedge has built in at this point.
I have no intention of bundling any add-ons with Wedge itself, but making it very easy to obtain such should you want. I am not going to get into the madness that is 'picking a distribution for installation'.
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I am not going to get into the madness that is 'picking a distribution for installation'.
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That's not my favourite operating system either.
I'm all for giving people choice and I can fully envisage there being multiple reputation-type systems for Wedge but only a basic functional likes system in the core and anything else will sit next to or notionally replace it.
I feel that best represents what our users want from us.
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So is there an easy way to uproot it from the template to make way for an advanced ratings system?
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Not at the moment, sadly. But one should be added.
There's also no way - programmatically or otherwise - to disable it, but again that should get added sometime.
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That can be taken care of by the hook to remove its action.
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Dealing with the action is easy enough (though it's the wrong way to do it, there should be a proper disable setting, to also prevent loading it and running the query to get the like information too)
That doesn't solve removing it from the template, though...