Reaction buttons added: Insightful, Awesome
admin
We've added some "Like" style buttons to the forum. Let us know what you think!
You'll find them at the bottom right of each post.
When you go to someone's Profile page, you'll see how many of each they have. Clicking will show a list.
We'll be keeping an eye on how this goes. We're debating whether to add more, and whether negative reactions would be detrimental or not. Still up in the air. Your feedback would help on this.
Happy Polycounting!
You'll find them at the bottom right of each post.
When you go to someone's Profile page, you'll see how many of each they have. Clicking will show a list.
We'll be keeping an eye on how this goes. We're debating whether to add more, and whether negative reactions would be detrimental or not. Still up in the air. Your feedback would help on this.
Happy Polycounting!
Reaction buttons added: Insightful, Awesome 84 votes
I Like This
77%
65 votes
I Don't Like This
22%
19 votes
Replies
That does depend on how it's handled, though. An option like "Needs improvement" might be useful.
We debated whether to add these. Personally I am all for anything that promotes crits. These buttons could be a distraction away from meaningful feedback. But there's the upside of people seeing positive reactions to their posts.
I didn't vote, I don't have strong opinions either way. In some sense it's not like reddit since reddit uses voting to sort content so that the most popular stuff is the most visible. Which works okay sometimes, but misinformation and trash gets heavily upvoted all the time because ignorant people don't necessarily know any better but vote anyway... Here though it's not being used to sort posts so it doesn't have quite the same problem.
That being said... I do think it will affect what kinds of threads get exposure just not the same way. Because people who otherwise might have posted a compliment will opt to vote a post awesome instead and the thread won't get bumped as a result. Whether or not thats good or bad... I have absolutely no idea. So I like I said... I don't really have an opinion.
I don't think negative voting is a good idea, but maybe that is just self interest talking...
My worry is that I have seen many big posts by talented artists/ other professionals from the industry who write whole paragraphs full of their thoughts and after they provide us with such info, the response of the readers will be reduced to a button click. The way I am seeing it now, their response will be disproportionate to the amount of time the insightful poster took to write their post. Essentially, not all, but some people will refrain from even posting a "thank you for your insight, what do you think about x", because all they have to do is press a button. The counter-argument is that the same people might have not posted anything at all, so at the very least they can now press a button. Not sure, I am rambling but I just wanted to share the thought.
I see how reddit-style voting can cause inaccurate promotions. Our reaction system is currently not being used to promote content. But that was a suggestion made in moderator chat.
I can see the benefit of that kind of mechanism. Moderators can't see everything, but we want to front-page the things that we think are interesting to you. In addition to the existing curated system, a user-driven "like" voting system just might help populate the front page better.
I've seen something like this in the form of a "star" vote and I like it. It's simple and clear.
But I have to add a caveat and that is that there is no reply threading here. On reddit/answerhub/stackexchange, if you want to correct a top-voted reply you can reply directly to their reply and it will be easier to see. On here, unless you change the format of the site the only way for anyone to add a correction is at the end of the thread where no one is likely to read if they get used to finding the best post at the top of the thread.
Post sorting systems are sort of a mixed blessing in my opinion, on one hand I do think they make a site much more informative because the information you're looking for is easier to find (provided the community isn't upvoting garbage). On the other hand I think it really weakens the community because it is focused on rewarding the most knowledgeable users that dump answers rather than fostering discussion.
That last point is I think the most important because I think Polycount has largely been a community that has grown in skill together over the years. A lot of widely used workflows and techniques in the industry probably started here Polycount in the Tech Talk forum as users speculated and tried things out and shared their results. I'm not sure to what degree that would happen on a site like stackexchange.
On top of that, art is very subjective. Especially once you get passed the technical critique it becomes largely about opinions on what people think might look better and I feel like upvoting gives people the impression that certain opinions have a sense of supremacy over others.
I am rambling now and once again I'm basically ending a post with "idk ¯\_(ツ)_/¯" but as a final note I would say that any change in the core ways people process info and communicate with each other on the site is inevitably going to change the community in some way and once you add them its not always as simple as just getting rid of them and having the community return to how it was...
anyway.... idk ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Whats the difference between "insightful" and "awesome"?
if the only difference is the actual meaning of the word, thats very subjective and could mean a lot of different things to different people. Right now It kinda feels like we have 2 "upvote/like" buttons instead of one, dosnt really make sense to me. @RN Star idea is a much better solution in my opinion.
as for dislike/downvote, I dont think its a good idea, its not like a bunch of "downvotes" are ever gonna help a poster, we always have the "flag" button if its really necessary.
I think @MiAlx have some great points, (which I interestingly enough feel the need to point out here in my post, even though I pressed the insightful button) this might discourage actual posting.
another thing to think about is what this system might lead too, right now It might not be used to promote or feature content for example (at least not officially). but It might be used by moderators to gauge what post to feature (is this good or bad?). in the future one might say things like "hey, the system is already in place, why not use it for this or that. It can lead to things we didnt actually all agree with even if you voted "yes" here.
I started of thinking this was a good idea, but as Im writing this Im shifting more and more to "I dont like this".
I see Awesome as being something that's simply inspiring. Insightful is for a post that makes me think or shift my perspective.
The Reaction system was setup by the forum host (Vanilla) to add/remove points from a post's/user's score, which would then promote or sink or remove posts automatically.
But we've mostly avoided using this system. The Spam/Abuse flags are the only exceptions, see http://polycount.com/discussion/172785/the-flag-button-and-how-it-works
We don't want to enable any other use of the point system without some careful thought.
I also agree with lotet about the 'why two buttons instead of one?', but if some kind of sorting were implemented, and people voted in a way that made sense (like insightful for good tech info or art theory, and awesome just for great work), then it could be useful but I have a feeling they would intermingle to a large degree.
As for the buttons discouraging an actual reply, I'm not sure they would. If someone wants to respond with a real message, they can and likely will. If anything, it can do away with a lot of the 'Great job!' posts that don't really have much contribution outside of itself. So it could theoretically remove some fluff.
again a lot of this stuff will be revealed in practice, I think it's better to test it out then decide rather than making a decision with no hard evidence of how it will play out
now on the technical parts it could serve a purpose. like unity answers for example, its really practical if i want a fast answer, and saves me doing a lot of research myself.
the new buttons are not very good though. like others said, i dont really see the difference, and a simple star would be better. but still, i cant really see how this would improve the forums at all. less discussion is the only result i can image.
also, some people say it doesnt hurt to try, but i think you have to be more careful with your user base. if changes happen that makes people leave the forum, i think its hard to make them return. its not a trivial time investment to be active on a forum, so i think people are hesitant to try new things. example, even if conceptart.org suddenly became awsome i doubt any people would return to it.
And of course for finding posts to front page.
I hope this doesn't come off the wrong way, as it is just meant as another point of view when it comes to comments on art and why I don't think this buttons would help. I am not saying that such posts or show of appriciation are wrong and should not be done, I just don't see them as a priority around here. In the end in my case the harshest critique helped me more than any nice words I've ever got.
Regarding the original question I am neither for nor against it. I am not sure people will really stop posting because of a 'like' function. Probably rather just those Quote + 'This' posts will be affected. But the point about this turning into a popularity contest is rather what I fear. The quality of a post can be seen when you read it and the reactions on it - you don't need 'like' buttons for that. They will just give you a feeling about what the group prefers or not and people will be affected by that. Also looking at a profile where all the 'insightful' and 'awesome' get numbered in truth doesn't say anything, since it just absolut numbers. From my favorite hockey forum where +1 are used I can say that people that post the most posts have the most '+1's by simple numbers. Though looking at the '+1'/post-average things change sometimes drastically - and the board ranks the 'reputation' based on the total number of '+1's distorting the view who actually has a high reputation along the board members.
So even if I don't really care too much about it I slightly tend towards opposing this feature.
Dislike!
Joking aside, "whatever" is my personal feeling so far on these buttons. It hasn't really affected anything, as far as I can see. People are still offering solid crits. Now, if the vote was approaching 50% against, then it would probably be in everyone's best interest to turn it off.
I don't think having these buttons will be a detriment to a community that thrives on critique -- if you want to criticize someone's artwork, you still have to use your words and can't just press a dislike button, which wouldn't be helpful to anyone anyway. Having these positive buttons might actually encourage some people to leave more critique. Helping someone out by itself is its own reward of course, but having the possibility of an extra pat on the back could be an additional incentive. And if you post your artwork and receive no replies, but garner some "awesome" reactions, you know that you're on the right track and people are just too lazy or busy or anxious to comment.
So yeah, I'm positive about it.
Because too many big images make threads too slow to load for too many people. Hopefully this will lead people to be considerate of our viewers on mobile. Also, the longer people have to wait for images to load, the less likely the artwork is going to be seen.
Let us know what you think of this addition, good or bad.
is this becoming some sort of toolbar for standard quick messages? its more and more becoming a way for people to just click a button instead of posting/talking to each other. Im not necessarily against the buttons, but I think the idea/system is really contradictory for a forum.
why not just ad a button for "this needs more work" and we dont have to talk to each other at all. *He said jokingly but with a serious undertone*
Too Big is a completely unclear message when you're a clueless noob posting giant PNGs... you have no clue they're slow to load, since they load fine for you.
Besides each poster gets no notifications when people react to their posts, so they wouldn't know there's a problem unless they come back to look at their own posts later.
It was worth a try though!
I did change the buttons,
http://polycount.com/discussion/comment/2482409/#Comment_2482409
It's all an experiment. Expect fluidity. All your feedback counts.
Also corrected the positioning of the twitter icon and gave it a little color.
In your Profile:
In the Posts:
You can see them all here, for a bit of nostalgia: http://www.dtp2maz.dk/smilies/smilies.html
maybe darken/lighten the button when you liked a post?