Likes

[Loss]

I get lots of PMs asking me why the Like feature isn't on because they'd like to use it. I also get lots of PMs thanking me for turning it off because turning it on would be horrible. I don't care either way - I just want everyone to be happy. But people are divided on this topic, so please use this thread to figure it out amongst each other. If there is some consensus established here, we'll go with that.

[Jmare007]

You don't lose anything by turning it off really. And even though I don't think this board would lend itself to annoying trolling and people posting just to get a "like", I think it's better to not risk anything and leave it the way it is.

[Matt D]

I think it's very telling that the complaints and questions are from new people. I'm not saying we shouldn't foster and welcome new voices on the site, but we do have sort of a tenor and tone to our discussions.

[soup23]

If we do turn on the likes feature, can you promise not to post pictures of your kid Loss just to drive up "likes"

 

I am good either way but have wanted to like certain posts that I may not have a ton of commentary to add to (PETEF's year-end write ups for example)

[Childs]

There's already too much empty affirmation on the internet.

[Dooley]

It just seems so benign to me that I don't see why people are against it. I think we're all mature enough here to be able to handle the presence of a tick box being available to show support for a particular post. It seems like one of those things where people who were inclined to use it could use it and those who didn't could easily ignore it.

 

There are times when someone has beat me to a thought or made a point I hadn't considered but don't have a lot to add to. The "like" option seems useful in those situations.

 

It's not something that's a huge factor for me, but I can't figure out the rationale of those who think it's going to ruin the board or something.

[goc]

Sometimes I find myself clicking it for a post but then remembering we can't like posts here. And that's fine. Sometimes that encourages people to try and just outsnark each other and this isn't a board of one liner posts and I wouldn't want to see that change because of people trolling for likes.

[goodhelmet]

It just seems so benign to me that I don't see why people are against it. I think we're all mature enough here to be able to handle the presence of a tick box being available to show support for a particular post. It seems like one of those things where people who were inclined to use it could use it and those who didn't could easily ignore it.

 

There are times when someone has beat me to a thought or made a point I hadn't considered but don't have a lot to add to. The "like" option seems useful in those situations.

 

It's not something that's a huge factor for me, but I can't figure out the rationale of those who think it's going to ruin the board or something.

 

Something the mods and admins have talked about in the past is the encouragement of posters to actually post. We don't have a huge amount of posters where the "like" feature would benefit the board.

 

I think it's very telling that the complaints and questions are from new people. I'm not saying we shouldn't foster and welcome new voices on the site, but we do have sort of a tenor and tone to our discussions.

 

How do you know it is from new posters?

 

There's already too much empty affirmation on the internet.

 

Amen.

[Matt D]

Because 1) the few public ones have mostly (though not completely) been new posters and 2) we've been over this once or twice in the last few months.

I think I was leaning more towards #1 though.

[Loss]

I wish the people who have contacted me privately about this would post here to express their support for Likes.

[jdw]

There's "rec" on SBNation comments section, and it tends to invite folks to post reccy things. Part of me likes that some of the best comments turn Green and you can pick them out of a long list of comments. But I've also found that they don't really have a lot to do with signal-to-noise. I've seen sites with good signal-to-noise where the poster didn't really go in for rec'ing stuff for whatever reason, and I've seen sites where all sorts of stuff would get rec'd with at least half of it throw-away jokes rather than good stuff.

 

So... I'm kind of "Eh" about it. I certainly "like" plent of stuff on facebook, as Loss can testify to. But fb is also a different beast than PWO.

[Kronos]

I am not sure I see the value in this case. We know whose posts we like, and people around these parts are pretty quick to challenge something they don't like.

 

One social network I am on - Fitocracy - has the "Prop" feature. That's really neat when you first start. But eventually, it just becomes one more notification you have to clear. And it's not like I pay more attention to the comments with more props - anymore than I pay special attn to the comments on FB with more likes.