Remove emoji reactions

[xardas]

@Cyber-Typhoon

Do you have an example of this?

Facebook. Reddit. You either get ignored when your question is too specific, or laughed at, if the community doesn’t agree with your point of view. First example that comes to my mind is pointing out how one meme template stopped being fun a long time ago. Reusing it over and over made the subreddit dead, but there were active people that still loved the template and they were first to dunk on me for that. I wrote that in good intentions. Would you say it’s the “absolute truth”? I believe there’s no such thing. For most of us GOS is one of the best ROMs, but if one were to argue that he’d rather use Gemini AI OS (because of availability of services) he would be torn to pieces.

@Cyber-Typhoon

the community react accordingly to the tone of the individual comments

Have you seen the reactions under OP’s post? People try to ragebait him to show that they don’t care. If I didn’t agree with the post, I still wouldn’t just spam crying laugh emoji, but invest into the conversation on why is that a problem. Like you and I do now, with respect.

I did

Yes, I also do. That doesn’t mean others will though.

I don’t feel personally attacked when people thumbs down my messages or laugh

Not everyone has a patience of a pure saint. I think it’s belittling to a person that genuinely tries to help. You may not be getting this, but it is frustrating if you are ignored in such way.

I just wish there would be a switch. There are no drawbacks from creating one.

[Encounter5729]

@xardas

I just wish there would be a switch. There are no drawbacks from creating one.

True, that would be nice

[yes]

Also, why can’t we remove old reactions? Sometimes I react to a post by accident or want to change my reaction, but I can’t do it as it seems like there’s a time limit.

[Cyber-Typhoon (Always leveling up)]

@xardas

Facebook. Reddit.

Sorry, I should have been more specific on my question. I was looking if you have some example from this community.

@xardas

I wrote that in good intentions. Would you say it’s the “absolute truth”? I believe there’s no such thing.

Not at all. You were very open for dialog.

@xardas

For most of us GOS is one of the best ROMs, but if one were to argue that he’d rather use Gemini AI OS (because of availability of services) he would be torn to pieces.

In my opinion, GOS has their own track of community moderation challenges that is beyond the emojis discussion here.

@xardas

Have you seen the reactions under OP’s post? People try to ragebait him to show that they don’t care. If I didn’t agree with the post, I still wouldn’t just spam crying laugh emoji, but invest into the conversation on why is that a problem.

Adopting the path of the doubt is in many times more helpful for everyone.

@xardas

Not everyone has a patience of a pure saint. I think it’s belittling to a person that genuinely tries to help. You may not be getting this, but it is frustrating if you are ignored in such way.

I just wish there would be a switch. There are no drawbacks from creating one.

I think this part is where we diverge. It is part of human evolution to face conflict. If you are shielded and live in a bubble how can you change?

I also don’t know if is a good idea to provide the option to have a switch to turn off it because how one will notice if is been out of place? Emojis have this other role which is to quickly inform the communicator that their message were not well placed for some reason. A lot of the times, after the reactions come, the person has a good idea about the reason(s). In some cases it is a bit better to been called out via emojis than getting a response pointing the obvious. Can you imagine if for all the comments that were absurd we would have to spend time writing very calibrated responses of why the comment was unappropriated? That is a waste of energy and sanity.

[xardas]

@Cyber-Typhoon

I was looking if you have some example from this community.

No, as I’m a member of this community for less than a week.
But I think “ironic” reactions on OP’s post say this for themselves.

@Cyber-Typhoon

GOS has their own track of community

It’s not about GOS. It was an example to show how for us one product can be “the absolute perfection”, but for others products like Gemini AI OS are more useful. People have different points of view, and there is no aboslute truth, really.

@Cyber-Typhoon

Adopting the path of the doubt

I agree, especially if the path of the doubt comes from a discussion, and not soulless reacting leading to simple ragebait. Doubt encourages critical thinking. I don’t think emotions with no real response can help with that.

@Cyber-Typhoon

It is part of human evolution to face conflict.

Again, I agree fully with that. You can only learn so much more when you face conflict and think about your next choices. I would love if people who reacted neagtively participated in the conversation. Including, but not limited to: rottenwheel, Niek-de-Wilde and LukewarmNinja which normally are pretty active in this community.

@Cyber-Typhoon

the option to have a switch to turn off it because how one will notice if is been out of place

By reading comments in the first place and participating in the discussion. We don’t really need an emoji to laugh at a guy who’s expressing his concerns.

@Cyber-Typhoon

that their message were not well placed for some reason

Like I’ve said before, it’s often used ironically just to make fun of a person.

@Cyber-Typhoon

In some cases it is a bit better to been called out via emojis than getting a response pointing the obvious.

If a person is oblivious to the problem at hand, calling them out with emojis won’t help. But even a mean comment may steer that person in the right direction. Personally, I’d rather have feedback that way, and maybe that’s exactly where we diverge. Getting a like or a dislike doesn’t mean anything to me. In that scenario, I still don’t know where people disagree with me. Since that’s the case, I would still love to see a switch to turn them off.

@Cyber-Typhoon

Can you imagine if for all the comments that were absurd we would have to spend time writing very calibrated responses of why the comment was unappropriated?

Um, I don’t believe I agree with that. Look at other posts. When a few people respond in proper way, the topic ends. When I come to read the topic and don’t have anything more to add, I just leave it as it is. Sometimes I react with a heart on a response to say that I agree, nothing more. However, if I were to give a dislike, why wouldn’t I add my few cents?

For me, older forums with simple layout worked better. People cared about responding to posts, even if it meant writing something rude. It’s the lack of elaboration that frustrates me with emojis. Sure, you can write a bad post, and you’d be misunderstood.

Thanks for the response, I love to participate in a discussion and exchange our views. It’s better than clicking dislike or laugh emoji on your response.

[jonah (Jonah Aragon)]

@xardas

There are no drawbacks from creating one.

I think one drawback is creating one. Would you like to make it?

If someone sends me a component that adds this option as a user preference I’ll put it on the forum

[xardas]

@jonah

Would you like to make it?

If I were you, I wouldn’t create a site where you can’t turn off existing features.
Incidentally, accounts with low reputation level on the site (fresh accounts) have most of the features blocked and cannot use them. So it is possible to lock some features account-wise.

As you aren’t a programmer but a plugin manager, I won’t bore you with the programming details
Here you go: pastebin

You might want to turn to your contributors to verify and possibly modify this code to fit the site. I am not that fluent in creating plugins for Discourse. In my personal opinion relying on anonymous contributors (some of which are very new to the site) feels like a rather risky approach for a security discussion site administrator.

[jonah (Jonah Aragon)]

@xardas

I wouldn’t create a site where you can’t turn off existing features.

The gap between things that are possible for me to do and things that are worth taking the time to do is significant. I can turn off the reactions feature any time, but they are useful. I’m not going to only enable features that have very granular user preferences just in case maybe a couple people don’t like them.

So no, I don’t have an issue asking people to make features themselves that I don’t need nor want if they really want them

Anyways, I think this can be done with a theme component rather than a plugin, and maybe I will look into making it next month after all. Maybe it’ll come in handy for other features in the future. We shall see.

[anonymous378]

@jonah

I’m not going to only enable features that have very granular user preferences just in case maybe a couple people don’t like them.

@jonah

maybe I will look into making it next month after all.

Did you just talk yourself into it real-time

[jonah (Jonah Aragon)]

I’ve been nerd-sniped into thinking about how easy this would be to do in Discourse

It’s surprising nobody has made a component that simply sets CSS classes based on user profile fields already.

Edit: not hard lol GitHub - jonaharagon/discourse-custom-field-css-class: Adds CSS classes to the body tag based on public custom fields.

[KevPham (Kevin Pham)]

@xardas

For me, older forums with simple layout worked better. People cared about responding to posts, even if it meant writing something rude. It’s the lack of elaboration that frustrates me with emojis. Sure, you can write a bad post, and you’d be misunderstood.

I’ll give you credit. As someone who was born way after these older forum were made, I do prefer how these communities interacted with each other during my occasional visits. It always has been a unique characteristic that the modern internet lost entirely.

Whether we will remove emojis entirely or only negative ones would require us to think it over. This issue has been something brought up by PG staff members before but the issue has always been implementation.

As for my personal opinion (and not reflective of what Jonah and other folks believe), I feel that the concept of the “mass downvote” can scare away newer members. I would much rather see a 10-second reply than an instant downvote or laughing emoji on topics where the poster is objectively wrong

[tomasz86]

@xardas

I just wish there would be a switch. There are no drawbacks from creating one.

I personally just block them with a custom uBlock Origin filter… I don’t really care about reactions under my posts, however I’ve always felt that seeing reactions under someone else’s post might subconsciously skew my opinion on it (as they tend to catch the eye before actually reading the text), which I don’t want to happen.

[Smee]

So if someone can’t do it with an emoji then they can do it with their words. Should we take those away from people also?

[gapless]

That’s the thing. Emojis are sometimes way more polite. For example, every time I see a “GrapheneOS or go home” or “Monero or death” type of comment, my first reaction is to reply with “stop being an elitist condescending c*ntwaffle”, but then I see the thumbs down emoji and just use that instead. Saves time and dignity.

[xardas]

@jonah

I can turn off the reactions feature any time, but they are useful.

Oh, so you misunderstood when I said user-side emoji switcher would be useful? It was never about turning off reactions for everyone smh

@jonah

I don’t have an issue asking people to make features themselves

So first you say that you aren’t going to enable features that have very granular user preferences, and then you say that you don’t have issue asking people to make the features themselves? Absolutly bada**, making requests asking for features and then “not going to enable them” hahah

@jonah

theme component rather than a plugin

Cool, but does it even matter at this point? Clearly you disaprove of this functionality. Of users to have freedom to turn off annoyances. I’m not going to rant about it. But it’s everything that disgusts me in social media and internet in general.

The laugh emoji just about sums it up. What did you try to accomplish by that? This is feels like a way to mock users who are offering new ideas. If the people running the site continue to react this way, I don’t think the community will see any real improvements over the site in the coming years. Adding an existing plugin to the site is a challanging thing to do indeed.

[xardas]

Thank you Kev, that’s way more professional way of responding than what Jonah presented.

[xardas]

@Smee

So if someone can’t do it with an emoji then they can do it with their words

Could you explain what do you mean by that? The thread is about creating user-side switch to turn off the visibility of emojis if they annoy you. There is literally no “taking” anything from people. Quite the opposite. It’s about adding new features to make the site more user-friendly.

@gapless

For example, every time I see a “GrapheneOS or go home” or “Monero or death” type of comment

That is the job of community members to hide offensive replies. If you come across a ragebaiter or a toxic, you report them.

I’ve been here for a short amount of time, but as far as I’ve seen, that feature worked pretty well.

For me the emotions in these threads don’t mean anything. If I see something that offends me and people here in general - I report it, and don’t cry about it. Like you can see from my responses here, I am trying to resolve the issue and make something new on the site, rather than cry and call out people left and right. I see what jonah tried to do, maybe he also felt offended and tried to respond with an emoji. That’s not happening.

[jonah (Jonah Aragon)]

@xardas

Cool, but does it even matter at this point? Clearly you disaprove of this functionality. Of users to have freedom to turn off annoyances.

It’s just fascinating how confused you are. All I’ve done is ask for the functionality to be built, and then when no serious attempt was made I started to build the functionality myself. We can bring it live as soon as I come up with a few CSS rules to hide reactions tbh.

In this discussion, you’ve confidently asserted a lot of things that most other people in this thread can plainly see you are wrong about, like that we can’t control the features on this site, that I somehow don’t think it’s technically possible or completely disapprove of the idea of checkboxes, and that I can’t do anything except take the risk of installing things other people make and hoping for the best.

The idea you posited that we just blindly run anonymous code on the internet is obviously laughable, hence the laughing reaction, but I’ve also spent plenty of time responding to you with very specific answers that you decline to understand. You are not entitled to have websites run by volunteers be instantly changed just for you specifically

[anonymous378]

Look at all the words @jonah had to write when a simple to @xardas would of been almost as effective and saved him multiple minutes of his life.

[jonah (Jonah Aragon)]

At this time, the reaction options are not going to be changed.

If you wish, you can change how you visually experience reactions on the forum in the Optional Features section of your profile preferences. These settings do not prevent others from reacting to your posts.

Reactions are now de-emphasized for logged out users, but are still accessible.