You can now seemingly only use the “heart” reaction. While that might be fine, I notice that some people are now shown as having liked a post multiple times, an example in this post. I had given it a thumbs down and received 2 in return, all are gone, while some of those seem to have been merged into likes by a single person each.
17 Likes
Maybe @jonah can explain the new changes?
I personally don’t like the new “like bar” I liked the older one better. And can I have my 
back please also 
would be nice.
11 Likes
Probably just some unexpected update just as last time with the „Share on X“ Button? Hopefully…
3 Likes
Personally I like the change. I’ve always felt reactions on forums should be used as a way to express agreement with a message that contains the things you wanted to say. Negative reactions don’t really serve a purpose in my eyes as we can’t know your reasons for disagreeing. If you make a post and explain your reasons you help the discussion by bringing in new ideas and challenging incorrect information. A dislike doesn’t provide that.
2 Likes
Personally I disagree as I think some nonstandard reactions can function beyond a simple “like”. For example, I often use the “thumbs up” reaction to signal an acknowledgement, potentially an agreement with a statement, but nothing as strong as the heart/like reaction.
Further, even if I did agree that removing all “negative reactions”(how are we defining this) I disagree with the current implementation, in which some posts appear to have multiple likes from one user, because the “negative” reactions are still counted in the in the like summary, but the user who gave a previously negative reaction is no longer visible in the reaction list on the post.
8 Likes
Is it just me or has the ability to follow users been removed too? If I’m not missing something and it is gone for everyone I’m going to lean towards these changes being unintentional like @SYST3M_D3STR0YER mentioned.
Hopefully someone on the team will confirm one way or another to reduce speculation.
6 Likes
The leaderbord is also gone.
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Haha the button literally is still there but if you‘d click it you‘d get a 404/403 
So yeah these three things really point to the fact that it is unintentional.
5 Likes
I think they are important as the YouTube dislike button. It helps me to double check what I’m reading in case I get fooled by something that sounds plausible enough for me. Apart from negative reactions, I don’t usually post because sometimes what I wanna say it’s not valuable enough or it doesn’t provide a real informative value to the thread, but at the same time I want to express my opinion so there’s where reactions comes in.
If someone already posted the reason I would just thumbs-up it or use another reaction so I don’t repost what the other user already said or say something spammish like “I agree with you.” and nothing else.
7 Likes
Hopefully we won’t lose any of the reactions when they are restored.
1 Like
Being optimistic 
6 Likes
Likely: accidental Discourse updated stomped changes.
Otherwise if this was an intentional swap w/out comms, I’ll write a different response. Will await for staff replies.
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I’m still new here…I’m shocked that would be added!? WTH. X is vile and security nightmare!
2 Likes
Unrelated to reactions, but seemingly related to these newer Discourse changes, I’m also currently unable to view votes in Site Development > Tool Suggestions which suggests (haha) that some if not all of these changes are unintended.
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It wasn’t added by the staff, the forum software updated and added it without anyone knowing until it was already active.
2 Likes
I disagree. Disagreement takes on two forms in forums: (1) disagreement is expressed, and (2) disagreement is communicated. Disagreement is expressed when you express the emotions tied to your disagreement (e.g., "Ew!, “Boo!”, “Ick!”), whereas it is communicated when you undertake a debate to explain why your disagreement is valid (e.g., “You are incorrect because X”, “I am correct because Y”).
I think it’s pretty clear that reactions serve a purpose. They allow disagreement to be expressed. Not everyone is a logical debate robot willing to partake in a debate to explain why they disagree with a post, nor should they be expected to. They need a way to vent out that very human frustration, which is where reactions come in. If you don’t allow reactions to serve that purpose, the forum will be cluttered with posts that express disagreement rather than communicate it. You can’t debate against expressions, let alone with them.
We see this in the world of sports. For example, some fans (group A) will express favorable sentiments towards the Dallas Cowboys (“Yay Cowboys!”) while other fans (group B) will express favorable sentiments towards the New York Jets (“Yay Jets!”). All group A and B can do to each other is express unfavorable sentiments towards the other team (“Boo Cowboys/Jets!”). There is no debate happening in practice. And in principle, no debate can happen. All that’s happening is people expressing their emotions.
Removing reactions will lead to a rise in expressive posts and therefore proportionately less communicative posts. A rise in expressive posts will lead to less debate, more tribalism, more shouting matches, more aggression, etc. And more importantly, people will begin to think that expression of disagreement is a communication of it, that it is debate, which leads to a snowball effect of more people posting in that expressive manner. More moderation would be needed to weed out those unhelpful posts. Larger workloads on moderators are never helpful.
Humans will be humans, and expressing emotions is part of being human. Having a system that acknowledges that expression is also important. It’s nice to imagine that everyone on the forum will participate communicatively rather than expressively, but that’s not ever going to happen because that’s not how humans work. It’s one thing if Discourse had never had such a function in their code base, but it’s another to have an instance runner actively disable it. No one has any obligation to undertake a debate; everyone should have the ability to express their emotions. In purely consequentalist terms, it’s a bad idea.
But whether it’s been actively disabled or not is still unknown, as communicated below
9 Likes
I think they are important as the YouTube dislike button. It helps me to double check what I’m reading in case I get fooled by something that sounds plausible enough for me. Apart from negative reactions, I don’t usually post because sometimes what I wanna say it’s not valuable enough or it doesn’t provide a real informative value to the thread, but at the same time I want to express my opinion so there’s where reactions comes in.
Ideally we’d be doing this by vetting the source and not by popularity contest. I like that the forum allows us to provide information about our knowledge and experience level. For instance, I’ve provided no information about who I am and I’ve marked myself as intermediate. This means you should neither dumb things down for me nor take me too seriously.
If you ask me why I think something or, if you didn’t and I’m feeling very responsible, then I can source my claim and you can evaluate it. I should really make a habit of not posting unless I can source my claims because no one should be taking me as an authority on any of these topics.
If someone is a cybersecurity professional with a verified identity then you might take that as at least one informed viewpoint. It’s implied they speak from their professional experience, training, and self education, so asking for sources is more for resources to self educate ourselves.
1 Like