but…but…a picture of a thumbs up and a heart are supposed to replace a thousand words!
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That.
And that.
Lol.
There are downvoting capacities in many systems where there is no option to downvote. The system simply weighs silence as effective downvoting.
Where there is direct downvoting, I find the system to be even worse, and I rarely participate in such systems. I also tend to evade systems where there is indirect downvoting, such as FB.
Here, as on many forum type systems, there can be a ‘kind of sort of’ upvoting by a discussion growing, it keeps going ‘on top of the heap’. I do not know about anyone else, but if I am seeing no responses to my own response, or feel as if others have already said what I think can be said – then ‘top of the heap’ is usually unimportant to me.
I find, here, at this site, a bit of an odd thing: often I am one of the few who will “like” a post, even though the contents are, for instance, exposing something horrible in society. My like is not a like of what is exposed, of course, but that someone actually took the time to actually expose it.
Very often I will find on all manner of online communities matters which someone else says what I had been inclined to say, and others have said what I would have said. So, I may not post at all. That means nothing, for me, on the value of the subject.
Often my own response is very obtuse, though I tend to usually only respond on matters that I have given a great deal of thought. When I see someone has “liked” my response, to me, that tells me much more about them, then it does tell me about my own self, or my own opinion on the matter.
Of course, I double check such things when looking at their posts as I come across them.
“driving trollies”, which can simply mean, throwing out controversial points, or contrary points, can make a thread unnecessarily grow.
I would only add. So, for instance, many very lengthy threads might only be lengthy because of some utterly painful discourse which is entirely meaningless to many readers, but very, very important to a minority.
I am sure that is well known, but worth noting. Perhaps.
On these subjects, in general, for me - anyway - very often it is the rare, ‘hardly noticed by others’ statements from which I get the most value. That is something I find this particular system actually very good at bringing to the surface. Such matters are individual based, and not conducive, directly, to the entire audience.
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Agree!
IU wish more people would make use of the ‘reply as linked topic’ or the mods would fork some derailing conversations that are worth having out into their own threads. It seems very possible, and like maybe Discourse was built for it, if you find the right moderation regime to work it.
I was a Discourse agnostic who feared change, but this Discourse platform turns out to be one of the better things that has happened around here in 10 years or so.
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The problem with reply as linked topic is you end up in some non-BB topic ghetto and your topic dies on its ass. Better to be a bit off topic on the main thread where more eyeballs see it.
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exactly. linked-topic replies and user-submitted threads are so much fruit left to rot on the vine. unfortunate, but I suppose there’s nothing to be done.
although, I will add that I usually check all user-created threads as they come up on my feed; the ones that turn out to be linked-topic replies are some of the most esoteric minutia on the entire internet.
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Better for whom, is the bigger question, I think.
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I just realized that the context of the “Thumbs Up” image could also mean “Up Yours”! The ambiguity/meaningless of “Like” in intentional in social media. Unless giving some account of yourself by having to write a paragraph, the gesture is just too easy and the Big Data application loves that because all the business partners of social media corporations is really interested in is the marketing intelligence that it implies. And it is neutral, being the same urge of marketers to get “nice, nice” feedback, rather than some argument. The business model of social media doesn’t care at all about what you say. People do, and that is the tool we have against the monetization of our urges. When discussion comes back to the Internet, maybe as the Internet falls apart due to cyber attack and spam, people will rediscover the forum and see that the blog post does not promote feedback. It is too hard to reply in context to a blog post and so the address-to role gets lost.
good point.
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This.
I think like/dislike is better than agree/disagree.
If we upvote based only on whether we agree, we are more likely to create an echo chamber than if we upvote based on whether we think it adds to the discussion. Sure, we’re biased, but still…
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Yeah, thumbs up has different meanings in different cultures.
The 
on the other hand, is I think universal across all cultures.
(Are there any cultures where somehow means “I despise you and everything you stand for, and I’m going to rip your heart out of your body and feed it to my dogs, then kill your entire family after they watch?”)
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Everybody loves vulva!
Nicely done!
Yeah, but, I might agree you’re right about something, but I might not like it…
I think we should make an active choice to try to encourage that.
If I see a post that I don’t agree with, but is making a contribution to civilised Discourse, then I will always give it a like. One of the drawbacks of this place is that is does have a tendency towards Groupthink, and that’s something that’s bad for the overall community. Sometimes, I’ve even seen people get jumped on for agreeing in the wrong way.
So why not give it a chance- give a like to well-spoken disagreement, and withhold them from rude or hostile people who are on your “side”.
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Have you -met- America? Bless your heart.
This is the problem with only having one option, as @MarjaE above and @Purplecat below and others have said. But I think in practice on this particular forum it actually works quite well. People regularly do like things that they don’t necessarily agree with here, and rather than just being those arguing the popular opinion, posts with the most likes tend to be things that truly add to the conversation and/or to the enjoyment of reading the message board in general.
There is definitely groupthink here but it’s nowhere near as bad as Reddit, for example, where the mere fear of downvotes drowns out unpopular opinions before they even get posted (here that might not actually be a big deal, but with what often passes for popular opinion at reddit it becomes worrying).
All that said, I do think some other options would be interesting to have - I personally refrain from liking a lot of comments for one reason or another but certainly would click something else. Like something simply acknowledging that I read it and appreciate it but am not going to respond right now. A lot of people use the heart button to do that as it is which is ambiguous (though the ambiguity is a plus in general).
Also as a general note I think that the heart button is quite useful, especially if you’re not that familiar with a topic - it’s valuable to see what other people think (being able to see who liked each thing is useful here when you’re familiar with everyone).
More options is not necessarily better. Look at Slashdot’s weird system. Analysis paralysis, “which of these six buttons captures the precise nuance of the emotion I am feeling right now?”
Even two options is more than double the thinking before making a decision, that’s bad.
