If it suits you or anyone else to see likestrikers are babies then I might point out that yelling at babies to stop crying isn’t very effective. This approach has never resolved a conflict in history and it isn’t going to start now.
People’s feeling are hurt. If that doesn’t upset you because they are hurt about something silly and you think it will just pass, then just let it pass. But when I see @jlw’s post about no one noticing the change, I don’t see someone who thinks this is silly and will pass, I see someone whose feelings are hurt by the hurt feelings.
I have no opinion of who is in the right and who is in the wrong. I know that when a community member leaves because the service doesn’t work for them there is going to be backlash. I know that when someone says, “no one is listening” the fact that someone was listening is an irrelevant aside if the thread started by the person who is listening is shut down for being stupid. I know that we aren’t needed here and the BoingBoing as a website would survive if none of the regular commenters ever visited again, and I don’t even know what the motivation for this forum existing is.
Whoever is making decisions about the like system is well within their rights to do so and anyone who is unhappy with the like system is well within their rights not use the BBS. BB would also be well within their rights to shut down the BBS completely and to lock threads if the threads are about things they don’t like and users are well within their rights to continue to post threads that don’t violate the rules of the forums, which currently don’t include a rule against whining about how the forums work.
So for me and my catastrophic thinking I see mom and dad fighting and I just wish it would stop.
In other words, your hurt feelings over other people’s hurt feelings have hurt my feelings.
But if the intention is to make users feel that their input is valuable, then increasing the like limit without responding to complaints about the like limit and using that as proof that people are being foolish whiners then locking a discussion is not a good way to accomplish that. If customers of a bank were upset about high monthly fees and the bank lowered the fees, good PR would be, “We heard you, and we lowered your fees”, bad PR would be “We lowered the fees and you are still complaining, you shitheads.” Again by this analogy I am not suggesting we are customers who are paying for this service, and even if we were the choice of how to behave towards us would be entirely up to those running the place. I’m talking about how people’s actions make other people feel, not about what anyone is obligated to do or not do.
