A Thanks Button - Your Opinions

[MythicalPinkTrashCan]

I personally don't think it should be allowed to turn anon thanks. If you agree, agree publicly. I understand anxiety but I worry about like what happened before with the weird pro TERF posts and people being like "I'm gonna thanks this TERF but on anon so no one knows I'm also a TERF."

Ravelry has my favorite forum buttons, (it's yarn/fiber arts social media website that recently very publicly removed all Pro-Trump threads)

Educational Interesting Funny Agree Disagree Love

They use an anon system as well, but it feels less risky since they have public denounced certain beliefs.

[jesp]

I personally don't think it should be allowed to turn anon thanks. If you agree, agree publicly. I understand anxiety but I worry about like what happened before with the weird pro TERF posts and people being like "I'm gonna thanks this TERF but on anon so no one knows I'm also a TERF."

There's no option for anonymous thanks, it's more that we can set a certain number of thanks on a post to be displayed as usernames then any thanks given after that will show as a number. That option is set to 5 at the moment, but can be raised easily if we go ahead with a site-wide trial.

I think that when it comes to contentious topics, like the pro-TERF posts recently, users are likely to reply and share their feelings with or without a thanks button. We saw this a while back with the discussions around Dan and Phil respecting other cultures after a potentially insensitive caption on a picture of a First Nations monument in tabinof - people discussed this for many pages and I believe this type of discussion would not have been hindered by a thanks button. We also saw this with the TERF discussion, people posted in agreement with the points raised and more people posted in disagreement.

I think, if anything, a thanks button may discourage people from posting during normal discussions rather than during heated discussions.

Ravelry has my favorite forum buttons, (it's yarn/fiber arts social media website that recently very publicly removed all Pro-Trump threads)

Educational Interesting Funny Agree Disagree Love

They use an anon system as well, but it feels less risky since they have public denounced certain beliefs.

I would argue that a rating system for posts would do more to harm discussion on this forum than the option of thanking or not thanking a poster. We aren't able to add rating options to posts either way, though.

[eevee]

I love that there's no counter, as people were always so interested in keeping their given/received ratio favorable.

For a long time I really loved that there was no thanks button and I always hoped IDB would stay that way...but after coming back from my break and seeing some of the recent discussions, including the heated discussion recently about radical feminism, I think that IDB has done a great job at fostering respectful conversations only. My issue with the thanks button was that heated discussions and drama were difficult to differentiate, and the thanks button made a ganging up bullying type culture that i always hated. I haven't been back for long, but it doesn't seem like IDB is a place for drama, so I'm not sure that would be an issue. I've recently found myself wanting to thank posts on here too!

I think the main thing to look out for would be if the thanks button turns heated/controversial/passionate discussions into drama, or makes them feel more like drama to someone who may not have a majority opinion. I think that's a potential but I'm not 100% sure.

In short, I like the trial period

[jesp]

Thanks to everyone for your replies in this thread. As things stand we're most likely going to start a trial of the thanks button across the forum in the next couple of days.

The thanks button will not be available in some parts of the forum, including the Dan and Phil faq and global announcements {like the forum faq found at the top of each forum}.

We'll reset the thanks that have been given to posts in this thread before we start the trial. We'll most likely set the thanks displayed as usernames on posts to 10 to begin with and adjust as needed.

Just to make sure people are aware, it is very unlikely but we may have to disable the button if there are compatibility issues or if it leads to a negative environment. We'll ask again for people's thoughts after everyone has had a chance to trial it across the forum.

Let us know if you have any further thoughts, positive or negative - if you'd rather talk to us in private, you can send me or another mod a PM.

[MythicalPinkTrashCan]

My feedback on the button now that it's been a bit

I don't enjoy that it has to reload the page after being clicked. I forget everytime I click it and then have to wait patiently for it to load? How dare the button make me wait for .001 of a second.

[itasca00]

Something I don't like is that "likes" seem to be instantly permanent. If there's a way to "unlike" to a post (that you've "liked" accidentally, for example), I haven't been able to figure it out. It would be nice if there were a grace period to "unlike" a post, similar to the one we have for deleting and editing a post. I realize this may well be something that can't (currently) be provided, but I wanted to give the feedback nevertheless.

[liola]

Is there a way to change the button position? On mobile it's very uncomfortable to have it right beside the quote button, I keep accidentally liking posts which is kinda awkward when I don't actually agree with the post but I just wanted to quote it

[jesp]

Apologies for the late replies, I've been away from the forum for a few days.

Something I don't like is that "likes" seem to be instantly permanent. If there's a way to "unlike" to a post (that you've "liked" accidentally, for example), I haven't been able to figure it out. It would be nice if there were a grace period to "unlike" a post, similar to the one we have for deleting and editing a post. I realize this may well be something that can't (currently) be provided, but I wanted to give the feedback nevertheless.

There is a setting that allows thanks given to be removed, but it is a binary allow removal/do not allow removal setting with no options for a grace period.

I'm not necessarily opposed to enabling this if people want it, and since we're still trialing the thanks button I could enable the removal option for people to test. Hopefully more posters will give their thoughts in this thread.

Is there a way to change the button position? On mobile it's very uncomfortable to have it right beside the quote button, I keep accidentally liking posts which is kinda awkward when I don't actually agree with the post but I just wanted to quote it

There isn't an option to change the position, but it might be possible by fiddling around with the extension's code - I did this early on to remove some parts of the extension that people were against but, based on that experience, I am worried that there might be some issues with the modified extension breaking the forum.

If posters are okay with the thanks removal option from above being enabled that may solve your problem.

[liola]

Apologies for the late replies, I've been away from the forum for a few days.

Something I don't like is that "likes" seem to be instantly permanent. If there's a way to "unlike" to a post (that you've "liked" accidentally, for example), I haven't been able to figure it out. It would be nice if there were a grace period to "unlike" a post, similar to the one we have for deleting and editing a post. I realize this may well be something that can't (currently) be provided, but I wanted to give the feedback nevertheless.

There is a setting that allows thanks given to be removed, but it is a binary allow removal/do not allow removal setting with no options for a grace period.

I'm not necessarily opposed to enabling this if people want it, and since we're still trialing the thanks button I could enable the removal option for people to test. Hopefully more posters will give their thoughts in this thread.

Is there a way to change the button position? On mobile it's very uncomfortable to have it right beside the quote button, I keep accidentally liking posts which is kinda awkward when I don't actually agree with the post but I just wanted to quote it

There isn't an option to change the position, but it might be possible by fiddling around with the extension's code - I did this early on to remove some parts of the extension that people were against but, based on that experience, I am worried that there might be some issues with the modified extension breaking the forum.

If posters are okay with the thanks removal option from above being enabled that may solve your problem.

Knowing what it means to fiddle with code I think the best option would be to enable thanks removal, yes. My fingers might still accidentally like posts, but it'll be better to unlike it at least

[wiccamoody]

Apologies for the late replies, I've been away from the forum for a few days.

Something I don't like is that "likes" seem to be instantly permanent. If there's a way to "unlike" to a post (that you've "liked" accidentally, for example), I haven't been able to figure it out. It would be nice if there were a grace period to "unlike" a post, similar to the one we have for deleting and editing a post. I realize this may well be something that can't (currently) be provided, but I wanted to give the feedback nevertheless.

There is a setting that allows thanks given to be removed, but it is a binary allow removal/do not allow removal setting with no options for a grace period.

I'm not necessarily opposed to enabling this if people want it, and since we're still trialing the thanks button I could enable the removal option for people to test. Hopefully more posters will give their thoughts in this thread.

Is there a way to change the button position? On mobile it's very uncomfortable to have it right beside the quote button, I keep accidentally liking posts which is kinda awkward when I don't actually agree with the post but I just wanted to quote it

There isn't an option to change the position, but it might be possible by fiddling around with the extension's code - I did this early on to remove some parts of the extension that people were against but, based on that experience, I am worried that there might be some issues with the modified extension breaking the forum.

If posters are okay with the thanks removal option from above being enabled that may solve your problem.

Knowing what it means to fiddle with code I think the best option would be to enable thanks removal, yes. My fingers might still accidentally like posts, but it'll be better to unlike it at least

Just wanted to pop in here and say I second this. I think I also have a kind of muscle memory with idb and if I'm not actually thinking about it and I want to quote a post I 100% give it thanks by mistake.

[jesp]

Just wanted to pop in here and say I second this. I think I also have a kind of muscle memory with idb and if I'm not actually thinking about it and I want to quote a post I 100% give it thanks by mistake.

Once again, apologies for the late reply - one of us has to be the bad mod, and it seems like it's me.

I've enabled the option to remove thanks. We'll keep an eye on it in case there are any issues with bad behaviour but I really don't see that being a problem.

[jesp]

Thread locked. Further announcement here.