Happy new year everyone! As of now the forum supports a larger set of emotions than the “heart”. Use your newfound powers with responsibility!
The precise details are adjustable, should the current set turn out to be unsuitable.
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I made an observation that since this was deployed people have a tendency to give 
instead of 
– possibly because the latter seems too personal, or too strong a reaction when a simple thumbs up is available? Anyway, there was some redundancy here, so I’ve changed things. The regular “like” reaction is now thumbs-up instead of the heart, and heart is no longer in the list. I’m sort of sad to see it go, but simpler is probably better.
There are some parts of the forum mechanics / gamification that runs on likes, and I don’t think those are triggered by the use of a non-like thumbs-up, so this will work better for that as well…
But… where is the love?
While in most cases thumbs are more appropriate for likes and I like the new default, can’t the heart stay for emotional outbursts?
Sure it can 
Please disable the downvoting though. I see it used frequently now and I don’t think it makes the forum a better place. If someone disagrees or is unhappy, putting that sentiment into words is a hurdle that might help tuning down such comments. While simply pushing the thumb-down symbol is too easy and not really useful.
Didn’t Facebook and friends even remove the negative reactions some years ago, IIRC? (I’m not on Facebook, just read about it.)
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Possibly. I scrolled through all the 41 threads that have been active in the last seven days and saw only one individual in one thread using it during that timeframe. Even in that case I think it may possibly provide a relevant signal, although perhaps more about the sender than the receiving posts. That said, I’m aware that the existence of negative reactions is polarising, obviously, and I think the thumbs-down exists mostly to provide symmetry to the thumbs-up… the confusion and astonishment emojis could convey negativity as well, but could also be signs of empathy. Similar with an anger emoji, if there was one.
In any case, yeah, I’m not super attached to it or anything. If we want it gone, it can be gone.
- Get rid of it
- Keep it
- Meh
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voters
That’s exactly what triggered me to question it. Expressing dislikes to a person’s posts can be caused by that person misbehaving. But from their perspective, receiving such anonymous pushback is more likely to make them angry and misbehave even more. (“What, you giving me thumbs down after I’ve just proven you’re an idiot! §%$!/=§”)
A polite explanation of their failure and calling back to order is the better reaction IMO. Or just silence, in case of real trolls of course.
Might have been less on the forum than I thought, but GitHub exhibits the same “problem” with their thumbs-down reaction.
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Fine. I think it’s pretty clear, too, though I suspect my interpretation is slightly different than yours – mainly that apparently, a total of nine people care enough about this issue to even press a button for it. I’ve disabled the plugin. In practice, more or less only the plus-one reaction was used and I don’t care to discuss it further.
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