Discussion of the emotive "like" system

I would probably use one labelled 'not a clue what you're on about' fairly often.
Also, one that was a simple 'thanks' would be good.

 

This is the real reason I did it. Fucking ambiguous "like" button.

However, it's also good marketing. And helps bridge cross-type communication gap. And helps MTs express warmth.

 

My first act with the 83 new emote buttons will be to fundamentally muck with the meaning of each one, because words are my bitches and I am Bill Cosby--

No, excuse me, I meant to say... I am excited to analyze the affordances of our new communications technology.

Can one use an emoji sarcastically? Asking for a friend.

 

Well, Aeoli is deriving great satisfaction from tagging all my posts "rainbow warrior".

Of course, the rainbow is genuinely optimistic: a sign of Jehovah's covenant that, rather than destroying the earth by flood, He will smite the sodomites with fire and brimstone.

 

I am sure those whimsical emote texts are ideal for the TT hall, but these need to be cross type and usable in topical

 

Alright, having gone through the "oh, new toy!" and "they changed it, now it sucks" stages, I'm now in a place to analyze this new plugin.

Preliminary evaluation: The new ratings are leaky abstractions, and the work involved to imbue them with consistent meaning is not worth the potential increase in cohesion.

Layering another opaque/poorly defined social system... on top of the standard stack of social systems that nerds have to wade through... will probably decrease effective communication.

I have enough trouble parsing cross-type communication, now I have to figure out if the rainbow emoji is happy or gay or... godly? Sheeit.

Now that the TL/DR is out of the way, it's time to explain my reasoning:

Why is the "thanks" button superior to the "like" button? Because it alters the social context of the leaky "+1" abstraction... In a useful/productive way.

"Thanks" is relatively free of connotations or value judgements. Nobody is going to "like" an article about somebody's dog dying, because it would be giving a positive connotation to a negative event. But it's acceptable in context to "thank" someone for bringing the topic up.

"Thanks" is so fuzzy and vague that it ends up meaning the only thing it consistently means in almost every context: "I appreciate this contribution." It's also our current benchmark for "+1" tools.

The questions to ask of these new plugin buttons: Do they mean what we want them to mean? Do they encourage prosocial content creation/curation? Do they discourage antisocial content killing/white noise?

The plugin provides the illusion of asbergic precision, but is at best, a confusing leaky abstraction. It doesn't beat the standard "thanks" button for encouraging contributions/effort posting. And it creates a potential drama layer due to lossy metrics being prominently displayed.

That said, it's a new system, gotta see how it shakes out. That's why it's a preliminary analysis, after all.

P.S. Adding all these buttons in (increasing resources) for a fiddly, nuanced, vague social system (trains rabbit amygdala)? New "like" buttons are r-selected. *mic drop* *air horn* #DAYYYUMN #360NOSCOPE #Kthanks

 

So opt out

 

Meanwhile, in the midst of emoticongate kerfuffle, the UK government take the opportunity to sneak in pervasive online snooping laws.
See, we must remain focussed, otherwise they will win.

 

This is absurd.

That's my plan.

 

I think Boneflour's criticism is largely spot on. Maybe instead of having people opt out, we might decide to simply decrease the number of emotive signals. 20 is too much, even if we ignore the suddenness of going from 1 to 20. So lets just reduce their number to 5 or 7.

"Agree" and "Disagree" are helpful. "Thank", too, should remain. The distinction between "Agree" and "Thank" is important. We'll see people thank for a post they disagree with.

"Funny" should remain
"Antithank" is useless
"Winner" is useless
"Informative" belongs to "thank"
"What?" should remain and get an icon
"Friendly" can remain
"useful" belongs to "thank"
"useless" is useless

The others are useless, except "rude".

So we're left with:
"Thank", "Agree", "Disagree", "What?", "Funny", "Friendly", "Rude"

The first three are obvious. The forth is either a non-direct request for further explanation, or a statement of non-understanding. The fifth is a statement concerning humour. The sixt a statement of sympathy. The seventh is a statement signalling that someone regards the post as a some kind of attack.

 

While we're at it, we should enable meta ratings. Rate the rating. I find your thanks rude. My creativity is pessimistic. No limits!

 

I agree with the Vejiortan that agrees with me.

The above revision addresses most of my concerns, and miiiight even be better than original "thanks" system. 4 positive, 2 neutral and 1 negative is a good ratio. Good levels of "meaningness" in remaining categories.

I motion for immediate adoption. *waves hand* Hear, hear!

 

Alright, you slackers, here's what really should be done: impressionist paintings must be submitted in lieu of ratings. The artist's intent matters only insofar as the recipient can interpret. Therefore incompatible worldviews are sustained in a parallel fashion.

*eyes GTD label furtively*

 

It's funny that the 'thank' button still remains (the sole previous option).
Now we have a few more options, that are optional, and mostly invisible.
And people complain. Heh heh.
Nowt as queer as folk.

 

My impressionist painting rating of Kensuimo's post:

 

Agreed.

Why? Downvote buttons are a standard web 2.0 feature. Helps with segregation.

Agreed. Unless we changed it to Aeoli's "Troo (phenotype)"? No, that sucks. How about, "Noble"? That could work cross type...

Deleted.

Agree.

Agree. Deleted.

Why?

Rude | Immoral | Boring | Dumb
I added the first three to reduce use of "Dumb", and to make downvotes/anti-thanks more specific. For me, it would reduce needless disagreement posts by simply providing a button to register the reaction. That fulfills the need and then people can move on.
Also, I don't want to see things called "dumb" that are high IQ but wrong in some other way.