Add more Reaction options

[AlexanderM (Alexander Momchilov)]

I noticed on the TrueNAS forums that they have way more reaction options besides just the default :

It's pretty awesome. These come from Discourse Reactions, a first party plug-in. Could we enable it on these forums?

I often find myself wanting to give as more of an acknowledgement, where a feels misplaced.

[dima_kozhinov (Dmitry Kozhinov)]

Experiencing emotions is a very human thing. Expressing emotions is an important part of a social activity, such as a forum. I believe a forum should allow expressing a variety of emotions, from positive to negative, like here:

Of course forum policymakers may prohibit expressing negative emotions to pretend that "this place is a happy one", which I oppose.

[smkuehnhold (Samuel Kuehnhold)]

Speaking as someone who is part of a community that has went through a lot of drama recently... I really think these bring more trouble than they are worth. They seem innocuous at first glance, but people really seem to (ab)use them in ways that drive conversations in directions that aren't very productive.

[Karl]

A lot of damage has been done to the world by people who put too much value in internet points. It’s not healthy.

I might even support something in the opposite direction - hide the names and the number of likes, and people just highlight responses they think are interesting without any implied endorsement.

[AlexanderM (Alexander Momchilov)]

@Karl

and people just highlight responses they think are interesting without any implied endorsement.

Funny enough, that's exactly my desire behind wanting over

[vanvoorden (Rick van Voorden)]

@dima_kozhinov

Of course forum policymakers may prohibit expressing negative emotions to pretend that "this place is a happy one", which I oppose.

FWIW… this forum does not allow memes. And that includes wholesome memes. In order to not allow dark and unkind memes… the decision was made to not allow all of them.

I don't think it's completely fair to assume that if mods had the option to add reaccs they would only choose "happy" or "positive" reaccs.

Forums Policy on "Memes" and Other Expressive Images

Hello, Swift community. The Core Team has decided to impose a new policy on the use of expressive images on these forums. Most importantly, this policy would forbid the use of “memes” and similar images. The primary purpose of these forums is to foster open and productive technical discussion. One of our goals as a community is to maintain an overall friendly but professional tone of conversation, where all community members feel welcome to start new conversations and engage in debate. It is k…

[John_McCall]

The primary mission of these forums is to foster productive and insightful technical discussion. The problem with something like a "crying face" reaction is not that expressing a negative reaction is forbidden here; it's that, if you're having a negative reaction, we want you to explain what you're thinking so that other people can understand it, which is what allows us to have that productive and insightful technical discussion.

I'm actually not sure we have the technical ability to remove the reaction from Discourse, but I wouldn't want to anyway. I think it's a nice way of showing that you appreciate somebody's post without distracting from the conversation. But I'm quite comfortable with saying that that's the only kind of reaction you should be able to express without using your words.

[Joe_Groff]

@John_McCall

I'm actually not sure we have the technical ability to remove the reaction from Discourse, but I wouldn't want to anyway. I think it's a nice way of showing that you appreciate somebody's post without distracting from the conversation.

I think reactions also serve a useful purpose for acknowledging a reply without sending a full-on reply notification to the recipient and obligating them to click through to read a response. But that only needs one reaction bit and not a palette of different reactions.

[allevato (Tony Allevato)]

I've definitely used reactions to mean at least two different things on the forum:

• I agree with what was said in this post and I want to have the discussion reflect that, but I have nothing more substantial to add in a reply.
• I appreciate what this post adds to the discussion, regardless of whether or not I fully agree with it (in some cases, I may not).

While I can see why someone would want to distinguish between those or among other subtleties, I don't think it's necessary or all that valuable because discussions on the forum don't use count as a critical factor in making decisions. They may be used as a rough measure of general sentiment for something, but there are no situations (that I'm aware of, at least) where someone says "a lot of people really liked this comment, so the decision on X is now swayed from this to that."