Likes

Nao

  • Dadman with a boy
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Likes
« on May 11th, 2011, 03:40 PM »Last edited on October 8th, 2014, 09:11 PM
Area: Miscellaneous
Feature: Reactions (Likes)
Developer: Arantor & Nao
Target: users
Status: 95% (core functionality implemented for posts and thoughts)
Comment:

We never liked karma in SMF. We don't like the idea that people get thumbs down on the basis of a message, but they never get to know which posts got them that reputation. Plus -- it's a bit of an ego trip.

Implementing 'like' buttons on posts/topics is a better way of actually guiding people through a user's best posts. We're hoping to implement the feature in every possible feature, such as media items.

The structure already implemented allows for liking any structure in theory - even plugin-added ones, and there's already the foundation for even doing it through AJAX, just more UI work needs to be done; most of the core was added in enough time to get it on wedge.org with more to follow ;)

:edit: October 2014: added support for multiple like types; renamed to 'Reactions'.

Re: Like/dislike
« Reply #31, on July 3rd, 2011, 02:04 PM »
Hello guys,
just when started to accept the annoyance of themes/languages/mods mess in smf I discovered your project.
I had already started to thing about custom mod for smf regarding karma so I just would like to share my thoughts. I am rather a proponent of karma system for certain topics insted of simple like/dislike democracy.

Ideal karma/post popularity system would IMO have these features:
- input is just by post voting (no buddy/ignore at user level)
- users karma is made according to their posts popularity, activity in forum (post count), date of registration
- user vote for post is weighted by their karma and average vote given by themselves
- post look would be deterined by their popularity (treshold for smaller font, less contrast text/background)

Question is how to manage the circular dependency in user karma/post popularity. Two extremal solutions would be complete instant recalculation (guess would be terribly resources intensive) or not to recalculate historical values.

I would love to hear your opinions either for cultivating thoughts about such system for myself or for discussion if it should be implemented in wedge or as a mod.

Re: Like/dislike
« Reply #32, on July 3rd, 2011, 02:11 PM »
I really, REALLY dislike karma as a concept. This, unfortunately, even more so.

With your methodology, users who have a run of being unpopular will not only be pushed out of the community forcibly, they don't even have much of a chance to redeem themselves.

Plus, it has the single worst characteristic of a meritocracy: long term members who have voice can easily and effectively shut out new people in the community by never giving them much of a say in the first place. It means their crown can never be challenged, so to speak.

The *only* way I'd ever support such a solution is if downvoting, in whatever form, cost the user some of their reputation in order to make.

I do not see us supporting this in the core, doing it as any kind of mod is likely to be frustratingly complex no matter how flexible we make the modding system.

Re: Like/dislike
« Reply #33, on July 3rd, 2011, 08:23 PM »
I'm with Pete. Plus, if you mostly give dislikes, you're likely to get bad karma over time. So people would just stop disliking altogether.

Re: Like/dislike
« Reply #34, on July 3rd, 2011, 08:29 PM »
This is why Facebook and Google+ doesn't give dislike tool. But to each their own.

Re: Like/dislike
« Reply #35, on July 3rd, 2011, 08:50 PM »
Thanks for your replies.

I understand your points but think that some of them are just a matters of setting or fine-tuning the system.

Problem is that I would like to give my users some hint on which posts are valuable because when they are new to the board they usually can not distinguish good and bad info (not talking about opinions). As I think over your posts I would like to ask if you think that this should be solved otherwise (member groups...) or that like/dislike would help in this case.

Re: Like/dislike
« Reply #36, on July 3rd, 2011, 08:51 PM »
@DS> My only gripe with 'dislike' not being there, is that you don't know if people don't 'like' your items because they disliked them, or just because they didn't read it... ;)

For the French reading this -- think of L'école des fans. Everyone gets a 10/10, even if they suck.

Re: Like/dislike
« Reply #37, on July 3rd, 2011, 09:01 PM »
Completely agree there Nao, I'm a very strong advocate for the dislike feature with the option to disable for those who do not want to use it.

Re: Like/dislike
« Reply #38, on July 3rd, 2011, 09:22 PM »
Quote from spoogs on July 3rd, 2011, 09:01 PM
Completely agree there Nao,
My post was actually pro-dislike button, I'm afraid ;)

But this is the only point where I'm pro-dislike. Overall I'm not very enthusiastic about it. Why? Because I think a 'dislike' is not something encouraging, and if you really want to share your feelings about something, it should be constructive criticism -- i.e. you should post an actual comment about it.
Re: Like/dislike
« Reply #39, on July 3rd, 2011, 09:24 PM »
So basically, I think it'd be good to calculate the average score of an item based on its number of likes AND visits.
i.e., it doesn't matter if you have 500 likes for a post if you have 10 million views on that page. However, if you have 50 likes on a pages with 10 topic views, it means more. This should be taken into account and that page should appear above the other in Like scoreboards.
Re: Like/dislike
« Reply #40, on July 4th, 2011, 01:11 PM »
We never planned to focus on the poster ;)

Re: Like/dislike
« Reply #41, on July 4th, 2011, 06:18 PM »
I agree with everyone here who has stated that "karma, like/dislike" that the feature (sic) has no redeeming value. On the three forums that I Admin I refuse to activate karma, and refuse any request for the "Thank You" mod.

If I like a post I will send the poster a PM acknowledging it.


Re: Like/dislike
« Reply #42, on July 4th, 2011, 06:35 PM »
Yeah we had a disaster with the karma thing until we put in that mod where people had to own up to changing karma and now that it's out dated we just don't use it anymore.  Feelings got hurt, people got pouty, serioulsy, a bunch of 20 and 30 somethings got their panties in a twist over forum karma.

Weird.  But they are a lof of fun to drink with.  :)

Re: Like/dislike
« Reply #43, on July 4th, 2011, 10:03 PM »
You do realise that karma is very different to the like feature, right? Karma is per user, but likes are per post.

Re: Like/dislike
« Reply #44, on July 4th, 2011, 10:29 PM »
Quote from Arantor on July 4th, 2011, 10:03 PM
You do realise that karma is very different to the like feature, right? Karma is per user, but likes are per post.
I do.... and like I said I will pop a quick PM if I think a post is worth it. But then our users expect quality all the time. :eheh:

Re: Like/dislike
« Reply #45, on July 4th, 2011, 10:48 PM »
If there is no way to hold someone accountable I can foresee it being abused and for some reason taken far too personally.  Unfortunately the general interwebz are not always populated with the same level of maturity we see here.