Adding like system on the site.

The amount of people who have made the very same suggestions in the past can't be counted on two hands on this site. :derpe:

There's always a chance, but it's likely not gonna happen this time either. Any kind of reputation or like system has always been frowned upon by most people here because they're afraid of reputation junkies.

As for my opinion on this, i'm rather indifferent about it.

 

There was a time on this site when we had a reputation system, and some people childishly abused it for bragging rights and such. We haven't had a rep/like system or anything similar to it since.

 

I think I'm getting used to there being no like system. Sometimes I really wish I could "like" a post and show my appreciation to whoever made it, but if the post is good enough I could probably find a reason to quote and respond to it anyway.

I think it makes things a bit more natural. People can't be given that artificial pride that comes from having people press some simple button on their posts a lot.

 

[Bumping this for newer input.]

The problem I had with the old reputation was that it encouraged certain personalities to post nonsensical off-topic posts that, while often humorous, really felt like they dragged down some discussions. This might be encouraged less if a reputation system was implemented that only allowed the person whose post was liked to view that post's likes. That might encourage "liking" or "upping" posts for personal reasons, similar to PMing someone "Hey, I liked that thing you did, nice one!" and not "Hey guys look at how smart and funny so-and-so is!" There's such a disparity between the two that I can't put it into words. People really change the way they act when they know others are watching.

TL;DR Reputation farming is why we can't have nice things, but a private/invisible "like" system wouldn't be so bad.

 

The thing is, do we really need it? I keep seeing people asking to add a like system or something like it, and the responses here are always the same. "It'll end up being abused."

At this point, i'm not sure if they're gonna be right or wrong about that. What i do know is that no one until now tried giving any good reasons to add a like system to begin with. As such, people see "disaster" as the like system's only purpose.

As for Dilly's idea. It could work out that way, but rarely does anything happen exactly the way you expect it to. It could backfire. For example, people making funny but non-sensical off-topic posts could still get reps for it and be encouraged to continue.

As Dragonbait said, i just can't think of enough pros that will outweigh the cons.

 

When I saw this thread, I considered a "private" rep thing like Dilly suggested but came to the same conclusion you did, that people would still find a way to take advantage of it. Having notifications or messages about receiving likes would give you a number, and nothing would really stop people from going into the general chat thread and declaring how many like points they have.

Something that popped into my head just now, though, is a sort of "personalized" reputation. A sort of like system that only affected the way posts appear to a person. For example, there's a person who makes a lot of good posts that you like. You give that person positive points and then whenever you see posts by that person, they'll have a green background, helping you to identify posts from people you tend to like / are friends with more easily. Conversely you can dislike posts, causing posts by members you really dislike to appear with red backgrounds.

This wouldn't affect anyone except the person rating posts, as it would be a way for users to identify posts by people they like or dislike.

Of course, to my knowledge such a system isn't possible in vBulletin, but that would be interesting to see, I think.

 

I appreciate [MENTION=959]Rarit E[/MENTION] 's input on my idea. It was just something that popped into my head so I thought I'd throw it out there.

That's interesting. If it's possible, it would be kind of cool to put it through a trial period, just to see what people think.

 

That IS a really good idea! Fantastic even.
You could extend on that idea and provide options to 'view posts or threads started by people I like'.
It might be a bit hard to implement, it certainly won't be an overnight job and I doubt we'd be lucky enough to find a third party plugin with that sort of functionality.

But I do think that'd be a great way to avoid the ego-trip that comes with rep, whilst still allowing people to 'support' posts (or in this case, more "the poster").

I think maybe an email or PM to a user when one of his posts is liked would be cool too, just refrain from giving them a total number.
Maybe even have the number of likes on the post, just again, don't give them that total sum (from all their posts).
(If they are then sad enough to count their PMs to get a bragging number, well, that's their decision.)
I do think it's nice to be informed of when you've made a good post though.

Dislikes, if present, should be private (to the disliker) of course.

 

[MENTION=7796]Xalder[/MENTION]

You could "ignore" posters you don't like, but your idea does seem to extend a bit beyond that. If it's possible at all, i'd say give it a test run.

 

I'll be the pessimist here.
I'm not quite so sure that reinforcing any certain like/dislike of a person into a physical manifestation doesn't seem very useful. Assuming the friend system was not abused to friend 100+ people, then it shouldn't be too hard to recognize friends in the first place. A personal liking system isn't necessary to remember who you like or don't like. Also, since the other person doesn't even see it, there is no "showing of appreciation."
Also also, red backgrounds would ruin invisi-text on the Spring layout. D:

Put simply, in my eyes, a private like system doesn't add anything extra. If you want to see somebody's posts, just ask to friend them, and they will show up in your feed.

 

Using Twilight theme. Your green invisi-text is already ruined.

 

Twilight Theme ftw

*high fives*

 

First things first, this.

Secondly, that's your opinion. I imagine some people look at posts more than they look at who made the post or any of that extra stuff, so it would emphasize the fact that you like seeing posts by that person, which brings me to my second point. Perhaps such a person isn't already your friend (if you don't pay enough attention to who makes what posts they might never be), "liking" posts made by them and starting to see a green background would emphasize the fact that there's something you like about them. If it's possible, having someone as a friend should also make posts have a green background, that way you don't start seeing stuff where you're friends with someone because of some VM's or PM's or talking in the chatroom, but happened to have disliked their opinion in a religion thread or something like that.

And naturally there's always the option to not use the system if you don't want to, hopefully also the ability to remove the backgrounds if you decide later that you don't like it.

 

And I would have gotten away with it, too!

Jokes aside...

That's quite the generalization. Rather, I would think most people would view the post and the poster to start figuring out who that person is, and most importantly, get to know the community. I'm just saying that most people wouldn't need the help to find people they like.

But who am I kidding? If there's an option to disable it, not just the backgrounds but entirely, it could still be useful for the users who decide to use it and not be in the way of the users who don't.

 

I think I'm on your boat, then. I'm in the same position.