On the original question, don't copy discord.
Also: I hate reaction notifications and have them shut off myself, but they are clearly a popular feature that drives engagement.
If you get rid of them make sure to replace with something that will both give dopamine hits and drive / reinforce positive engagement.
This is a pie-in-the-sky thing, but I've always thought reactions should be weighted.
The problem with suggestions like that is it implies certain voices are inherently more important, and complex rules is incentive for the biggest and most annoying faggots to gameify the system.
1. Certain voices
are more important.
Some threads & posts are featured - the vast majority are not. Most users' posts will
never be featured. Should
everyone's posts be featured in the name of fairness?
Talent and ability is not equally distributed. Someone that does two weeks of digging, hard work & in-depth research to make a funny and informative effort post is inherently better than a one-word sperg post.
2. Having some sort of ideological adherence to a "one man, one vote" algorithm doesn't necessarily result in a fair or desirable outcome. Why should a sperg who always writes short thoughtless garbage have the same algorithmic "vote" as someone who is talented and engaged?
3. By giving the two the same weight, it may seem like you are being fair, but you are really overemphasizing the sperg at the expense of effort poster (relative to their respective contributions.)
When you tie decision making into mass user input, it creates an environment of unequals like reddit or Wikipedia.
The current highlight function literally works this way. It's an algorithm that "ties decision making into mass user input".
( It's even subject to manipulation! )
Unless you are going to have mods select highlights, you are going to have to have an algorithm do it.
Wikipedia has become a cesspit because of top-down editorial policy, infiltration, and censorship Not because they selected the wrong algorithm.
So it's best to keep it dead simple and purely informational so that there is no benefit in trying to abuse it.
This is the part where I somewhat agree.
Simpler is typically better - not because of some sort of algorithmic purity test, but because simpler usually makes system behavior easier to understand and predict.
As for 'abusing the algorithm", that's always a risk. It's something that cryptocurrencies deal with on a daily basis.
The challenge is to write and/or utilize an algorithm that achieves the desired effect, whatever that is (i.e. highlight high quality or informative posts) while preventing undesirable outcomes (gaming the system).
. Full Unicode set would be a little gross.
