I think this site needs something like upvotes. Perhaps a flair system would be better though. Something like Steam Awards (minus the weird currency system) would work great. We could have awards for valuable contribution, funniest contribution, etc. The awards could be made with references to the hobby we all enjoy.
Having likes would actually prevent some arguments from becoming so large because people could express their support for an idea without dog-piling into the discussion.
Agreed, down-votes are probably not a good idea. However, a part of the problem with the Reddit implementation is that down-voted comments become less visible. I think that’s where a lot of the conflict comes from. I’m still against downvotes here but I think Reddit just did it in the worst way possible.
typing “I agree” just makes for cluttered threads and even if people expand the “I agree” the added substance can read like a simple-topic essay with a large word quota.
Joke. If someone has to say something, he can do so. Likes and dislikes are cheap, sometimes leading to team-building in a negative sense. Opinions don’t need agreement, nonsense needs to be corrected, facts can stay on their own.
Making a new post in a thread just to say “thank you for your contribution” makes no sense. Being able to give some other kind of indication of appreciation would be a positive change for thread readability.
There aren’t that many people on this forum so that threads would be overrun by such comments.
More egregious things regarding clutter and readability are inception quotations, sometimes people continue quoting until there are like 6, or even more quotations in quotations, with pictures… it’s bad enough on PC but terrible on mobile.
Some forums software have limits for how many quotations there can be, and they also automatically delete picture tags in quotations to only leave the picture links.
I think if this feature was added you would see far more upvotes/awards than you see thank-you comments now. I have a feeling that a lot of people want to express thanks but avoid posting to threads they are not initially involved in out of courtesy.
The positive feedback could help members who contribute a lot of useful information to feel appreciated. This should encourage more high-quality posts. Careful implementation of this feature would be key. For example, you could hide the exact count of “likes” or awards to avoid high-score mentality.
Edit: Started writing this before you updated your post. I agree that quotes are a space problem. Quotes should probably link back to the original post after a certain number of “nests”
Yep, that’s what I’m thinking too. The technical implementation might be very challenging though, that’s why I haven’t definitively committed to implementing it yet.
We do have an x0 button though, it’s labelled Report. :innocent: