- Joined
- Nov 14, 2012
It is no secret I despise the reaction system and want to re-do it. It won't happen on this software, but I am at a position with the new software rewrite where starting to work on the reaction system might be feasible, and so I am putting thought into how I want to do it.
The rating system, as it exists now, has endured several iterations, going all the way back to 2013. In the early days, people just posting "I agree" was very common, which doesn't make interesting conversation. So, as we were on phpBB, I installed a "like" mod. This is a a real screenshot of the old site, complete with colorful names and a cheeky Chris reference.
This was so long ago I had my really cool Enigma avatar as I was a Dota2 fiend.
Stare into the abyss.
After we moved to XenForo in 2014. There was something called TaigaChat and a Post Ratings mod by a weeaboo called "Dark" who literally owns weeaboo.com, which he used for business emails. I remember very starkly he had this blonde anime middleschooler as his avatar.
He seems to have purged absolutely everything about himself off XenForo, probably because better mods came along that blew his out. I distinctly remember that his chat had a "Fast Mode", which basically just wrote the chat history to a text file every single time a message was sent. This was, in fact, not fast, and it actually crippled the entire site until I realized what was happening.
Anyways, they looked like this. If those icons look familiar, it is because they are FamFamFam Silk. If you used the Internet prior to 2016, you will immediately recognize them, because at some point an insane person released a 1000+ individual icon pack as freeware and they were picked up by absolutely everyone. From Blockland mods to Government websites, FamFamFam was the ubiquitous icon set.
Especially relevant to us, was that XenForo 2 came out, which had post ratings baked directly into the forum software. For the record, these look like this by default. It is what we use now.
I have tried to improve this system, but the way the XF2 post reactions are set up is very inflexible. The reason why certain reactions don't show up outside of posts, and why sometimes you see reactions you cannot use, is because of my custom work I never finished. Anime's Post Reactions had a built-in permission system that allowed specific ratings to be tied to specific user roles. XF2's does not. XF2 permits every rating to be used by every one on all forms of content universally on the site. So, trying to restrict it by board, by user role, or by content type was not possible without custom work and not easy to do with it.
On top of that, one thing that the Anime did that I prefer to this day is he showed all ratings given to a post. This created scenarios were specific posts would "run the board" and get every single type of rating. This was a rare achievement, because it required enough users to click each of the rating buttons, but it also required T&H fans to apply their ratings, and it required an admin to give it an Achievement rating. It's stupid but it had charm.
Example of how ratings used to be displayed:
For posterity, how they are abridged now:
This is tidier but there's actually a loss of information. A lot of data that was previously immediately obvious to the viewer is just gone.
So now that we know how the reactions have worked before, this is how they work outside of the forum. I will also provide my commentary.
reddit
Reddit has two post interactions: upvotes and downvotes, and gilding. The upvote/downvote system as a form of post karma is completely unwelcome here. Rewarding users for falling in line with consensus is contrary to a forum. Nothing on the Kiwi Farms has ever worked on this mandate.
Gilding is more interesting but not really. It's similar to Steam awards. You spend a currency obtained through real money to put a special sticker on a post. This system has been around on reddit for years and I have never paid attention to it. I have also never paid attention to Steam awards. The system is only positive feedback, which isn't sufficient. On Steam, there is the Clown reaction, but that still rewards the poster with currency even though it's supposed to be an insult. All Reddit gildings are awards with some similar pseudo-monetary compensation.
Facebook
Facebook used to only have likes, but Grandma got upset she had to like posts about pets dying, so they made it different. I want to say that XenForo 2 directly knocked off Facebook's reaction system for its own system.
Discord
Discord has the most interesting reaction system. It's so ingrained into the culture of the program that they've added community-specific reacts and super reacts, which you pay for. The generic reactions are just every emoji in the Unicode Emoji Standard. I feel like they've done the best job. You see every reaction, you can see who gave those reactions, your reactions can be basically anything, communities have their own reactions, and they found a way to profit off reactions in a way that integrates seamlessly into a system everybody already uses and likes - no separate-but-equal systems like reddit.
My concern with Discord is that it's too generic. It works really well for something like Discord where everyone scurries off into private goon servers and you need an inoffensive set of icons for every possible discussion room possible. For the forum, it lacks character.
I've considered two approaches as viable:
1. Keep the XenForo/Facebook style, but have categories. Instead of displaying every react possible on one bar, have something similar to Facebook's that acts as the first-level category. You can click 'like' to like, open the fly-out and click a broad reaction, or further fly-out each category and get a very specific / memetic one, like Semper Fi.
2. Copy Discord. Just flat out copy Discord, make every Unicode character a possible reaction, and then allow custom reacts exactly like they do which show up above the generics. You would still be limited to 1 reaction, instead of Discord's kitchen sink.
Discuss.
P.S. Please do not make arguments about what would be computationally intensive or take up too many resources. That is not relevant and is for me to decide.
The rating system, as it exists now, has endured several iterations, going all the way back to 2013. In the early days, people just posting "I agree" was very common, which doesn't make interesting conversation. So, as we were on phpBB, I installed a "like" mod. This is a a real screenshot of the old site, complete with colorful names and a cheeky Chris reference.
This was so long ago I had my really cool Enigma avatar as I was a Dota2 fiend.
Stare into the abyss.
After we moved to XenForo in 2014. There was something called TaigaChat and a Post Ratings mod by a weeaboo called "Dark" who literally owns weeaboo.com, which he used for business emails. I remember very starkly he had this blonde anime middleschooler as his avatar.
He seems to have purged absolutely everything about himself off XenForo, probably because better mods came along that blew his out. I distinctly remember that his chat had a "Fast Mode", which basically just wrote the chat history to a text file every single time a message was sent. This was, in fact, not fast, and it actually crippled the entire site until I realized what was happening.
Anyways, they looked like this. If those icons look familiar, it is because they are FamFamFam Silk. If you used the Internet prior to 2016, you will immediately recognize them, because at some point an insane person released a 1000+ individual icon pack as freeware and they were picked up by absolutely everyone. From Blockland mods to Government websites, FamFamFam was the ubiquitous icon set.
Especially relevant to us, was that XenForo 2 came out, which had post ratings baked directly into the forum software. For the record, these look like this by default. It is what we use now.
I have tried to improve this system, but the way the XF2 post reactions are set up is very inflexible. The reason why certain reactions don't show up outside of posts, and why sometimes you see reactions you cannot use, is because of my custom work I never finished. Anime's Post Reactions had a built-in permission system that allowed specific ratings to be tied to specific user roles. XF2's does not. XF2 permits every rating to be used by every one on all forms of content universally on the site. So, trying to restrict it by board, by user role, or by content type was not possible without custom work and not easy to do with it.
On top of that, one thing that the Anime did that I prefer to this day is he showed all ratings given to a post. This created scenarios were specific posts would "run the board" and get every single type of rating. This was a rare achievement, because it required enough users to click each of the rating buttons, but it also required T&H fans to apply their ratings, and it required an admin to give it an Achievement rating. It's stupid but it had charm.
Example of how ratings used to be displayed:
For posterity, how they are abridged now:
This is tidier but there's actually a loss of information. A lot of data that was previously immediately obvious to the viewer is just gone.
So now that we know how the reactions have worked before, this is how they work outside of the forum. I will also provide my commentary.
Reddit has two post interactions: upvotes and downvotes, and gilding. The upvote/downvote system as a form of post karma is completely unwelcome here. Rewarding users for falling in line with consensus is contrary to a forum. Nothing on the Kiwi Farms has ever worked on this mandate.
Gilding is more interesting but not really. It's similar to Steam awards. You spend a currency obtained through real money to put a special sticker on a post. This system has been around on reddit for years and I have never paid attention to it. I have also never paid attention to Steam awards. The system is only positive feedback, which isn't sufficient. On Steam, there is the Clown reaction, but that still rewards the poster with currency even though it's supposed to be an insult. All Reddit gildings are awards with some similar pseudo-monetary compensation.
Facebook used to only have likes, but Grandma got upset she had to like posts about pets dying, so they made it different. I want to say that XenForo 2 directly knocked off Facebook's reaction system for its own system.
Discord
Discord has the most interesting reaction system. It's so ingrained into the culture of the program that they've added community-specific reacts and super reacts, which you pay for. The generic reactions are just every emoji in the Unicode Emoji Standard. I feel like they've done the best job. You see every reaction, you can see who gave those reactions, your reactions can be basically anything, communities have their own reactions, and they found a way to profit off reactions in a way that integrates seamlessly into a system everybody already uses and likes - no separate-but-equal systems like reddit.
My concern with Discord is that it's too generic. It works really well for something like Discord where everyone scurries off into private goon servers and you need an inoffensive set of icons for every possible discussion room possible. For the forum, it lacks character.
I've considered two approaches as viable:
1. Keep the XenForo/Facebook style, but have categories. Instead of displaying every react possible on one bar, have something similar to Facebook's that acts as the first-level category. You can click 'like' to like, open the fly-out and click a broad reaction, or further fly-out each category and get a very specific / memetic one, like Semper Fi.
2. Copy Discord. Just flat out copy Discord, make every Unicode character a possible reaction, and then allow custom reacts exactly like they do which show up above the generics. You would still be limited to 1 reaction, instead of Discord's kitchen sink.
Discuss.
P.S. Please do not make arguments about what would be computationally intensive or take up too many resources. That is not relevant and is for me to decide.
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and 
for us little guys.
