A 'Like' Button

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A 'Like' Button

Post by TomYi »

Title says it all. I want to be able to 'thumbs up' posts and comments with a simple button.

This is a feature that I've seen on other forums, and I think it would be a great addition to this one. You guys have posted PSAs in the past about supporting good writers with positive comments, and I think that this simple feature would go a long way towards helping with that.

Topic authours would get satisfaction from counting likes, while readers who don't want to write a generic 'Nice work' can just push a button instead.

If you guys like the idea, then I would suggest an anonymous Like button that doesn't actually display the names of the fans. That would remove even more reluctance among the shy members.
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Post by MaxRoper »

Not a bad idea, but there are a number of technical problems here still awaiting repair from the recent updates.(tagging, cloud tags, automatically logging out when changing screens, etc). I'd much rather see those fixes before adding anything new.

Personally, comments are what I desire and are what push me to post more tales. A "Like" on one of my stories wouldn't do much for me.
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Post by Xtc »

Agree with [mention]MaxRoper[/mention]
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Post by chadmc90 »

It looks like it'll be Christmas season before I can sit down and address site issues. Sorry guys, been busy with work.
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Post by TomYi »

As time has gone by, I have only become more convinced that this feature would improve the forum for the authors.

The simple fact is that the vast majority of readers are not commenting, and they will not change that behaviour.

Comparing the number of likes between chapters would help authors like me gauge the success of our works with greater accuracy.
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Post by chadmc90 »

If the community has strong support for it, the team would consider it. Let's see what other's think..
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Post by redlukas »

Well, I'd certainly press the like button for this suggestion if there were one. ;)
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Post by TayDay95 »

A like button doesn't seem like a bad idea, i just hope if it is implemented that people will still be inclined to leave comments. I'll personally always prefer actual feedback to just a 'like'. But you're right Tom, the majority of readers just don't wanna comment for some reason, maybe this'll help with that.
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Post by Killua »

I'm somewhat scared that this feature would lead to some people don't leave comments anymore and just hit a like. Personally I'm not really interested in counting likes, after all, I can already see how often my story thread was visited... it's just a number and nothing personal. I'm more happy about someone writing a comment, even if it's just short. And I personally think that if someone "only" intend to leave a short "it's a great story" it sometimes just develops into a little more than that and telling the athor, even in a short sentence, what he/she liked especially.

When there are just many people anonymously hitting a like button I, as an author, don't see that much of a benefit because I don't what the person likes. And if I just want to know if my story is trending I can still count the views... so for me the "like" is nothing more than one of those "viewers" hitting an addtional button...maybe even accidentally.

Just my opinion, I don't want to offend anybody with it. If the like button will be implemented I'm probably just ignoring it and keep writing my comments and still keep hoping people tell me what they like or don't like on my stories in a more or less short comment.
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Post by Solarbeast »

I can see both sides of this want, but I agree with what [mention]Killua[/mention] has said. The like button would just turn into a button that is constantly pressed to support a story/the author, but that gives the author no information on what the reader likes about the story. For an example of this, whenever I watch a YouTube video I now have a habit of just pressing the like button to continue to show support for the creator, and that gives them support, but it doesn't give them ideas of what is liked. But there are enough people there to figure out what most people like, unlike here, where we are a small niche site. I also worry about more people pressing a button than writing a short comment for the author. Is there a way we can do a trial period if enough members show positive support for this idea?
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Post by Gagfan »

Honestly I dont know if it would decrease feedback or not. I do a lot of my writing on deviantart specifically because the "favorites" provide a higher volume of feedback than I usually get from comments. Personally I think a like button would likely create more feedback from the lurkers and I dont necessarily think the more active members who currently comment would stop commenting... but I dont KNOW that. It would obviously be a risk that adding a like button would make stories become a barren wasteland of no comments.
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Post by TomYi »

Killua wrote: 2 years ago When there are just many people anonymously hitting a like button I, as an author, don't see that much of a benefit because I don't what the person likes.
Solarbeast wrote: 2 years ago The like button would just turn into a button that is constantly pressed to support a story/the author, but that gives the author no information on what the reader likes about the story.

To that, I would say that a like pretty much conveys the same amount of information as a short comment that says "This is good" (and there are a lot of short comments like that already.) I would argue that a lot of comments don't tell me much about what was liked either.

Killua wrote: 2 years ago And if I just want to know if my story is trending I can still count the views... so for me the "like" is nothing more than one of those "viewers" hitting an additional button...maybe even accidentally.

I too keep track of the views, but that doesn't present a clear picture either. A view tells me nothing about the viewer's opinion. In fact, I already know a lot of those views are just me going back and checking for any typos I may have missed. Who knows how many other views are just rereads?

With the current comment-only system, I am able to look at an increase of 100+ views and discern the opinion of 5 of them. For many authors, the view count/comment system simply isn't doing its job well, and I do believe that a like button would bring about better data on what the readers are thinking.

Solarbeast wrote: 2 years ago I also worry about more people pressing a button than writing a short comment for the author. Is there a way we can do a trial period if enough members show positive support for this idea?

Are you saying that you're worried a like button would disincentivise commenters, leading to an overall decrease in comments? If so, I understand. That is actually a legitimate concern of mine as well. All I can say in response is what I've already said above. A lot of those short comments are already worth about as much as a 'thumbs up' anyways. A trial period is an excellent idea in my opinion.





There is one thing I would change from my original suggestion: Don't make it anonymous. From my experience on social media platforms, I can say that a like with a name attached is worth far more than an anonymous one. Besides, members are mostly anonymous already.
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Post by TomYi »

Gagfan wrote: 2 years ago Honestly I dont know if it would decrease feedback or not. I do a lot of my writing on deviantart specifically because the "favorites" provide a higher volume of feedback than I usually get from comments. Personally I think a like button would likely create more feedback from the lurkers and I dont necessarily think the more active members who currently comment would stop commenting... but I dont KNOW that. It would obviously be a risk that adding a like button would make stories become a barren wasteland of no comments.
I agree with almost everything you're saying. I like [mention]Solarbeast[/mention]'s idea of a trial period to test this concern of reduced comments.
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Post by NotSeen »

I have on occasion thought that such a button would be a nice thing to have - even though, like others have stated, it might lead to less comments. A trial period sounds like a good idea.
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Post by chadmc90 »

If I do include such a system, I would prefer something with multiple possible reaction options like Facebook has. Here is an example of a customizable reaction extension we can test out:

https://www.phpbb.com/community/viewtopic.php?t=2397266
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Post by Killua »

chadmc90 wrote: 2 years ago If I do include such a system, I would prefer something with multiple possible reaction options like Facebook has. Here is an example of a customizable reaction extension we can test out:

https://www.phpbb.com/community/viewtopic.php?t=2397266
That would make it, at least, a little more meaningful. If I can see who posted specific reaction, I could also ask them (if they got their 10 posts) what they meant with their reaction e.g. the "angry" reaction mentioned on that developement page leaves a lot of interpretation like if they are angry with me because I wrote it or angry with one of the characters described in the story.
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Post by WillHBonney »

TomYi wrote: 2 years ago To that, I would say that a like pretty much conveys the same amount of information as a short comment that says "This is good" (and there are a lot of short comments like that already.) I would argue that a lot of comments don't tell me much about what was liked either.
I agree that a short comment like “This is good” doesn’t provide much feedback. However what it does do is bump that story back to the top of the section which can result in more views and more comments on that story.

I’ve had stories that were on the 3rd or 4th page get a simple comment and suddenly there’s a flurry of views and comments, not only on that particular story but on other stories I have written.
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Post by Xtc »

Personally, I am against a "like" button. Even a "Good story" remark means that someone who has enjoyed the piece has taken th trouble to react. Just hitting a "like " button is fairly meaningless. I would also be very against adding negative choices to any menu.
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Post by TayDay95 »

chadmc90 wrote: 2 years ago If I do include such a system, I would prefer something with multiple possible reaction options like Facebook has. Here is an example of a customizable reaction extension we can test out:

https://www.phpbb.com/community/viewtopic.php?t=2397266
Seems to me like something worth trying out at least
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Post by TomYi »

Xtc wrote: 2 years ago I would also be very against adding negative choices to any menu.
I would too, tbh. I think "love", "laugh", and "wow" would be good options. "Like" may also be good for readers who thought a story was good, but not amazing.

I was thinking about a "turned on" reaction, and I'm still not too sure. Yeah, that is how a lot of readers feel about certain stories, and it would be a welcome reaction to the adult section, but it could also be really creepy when applied to certain true stories for everyone.
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Post by Volobond »

I'm also against the "like button" option. Even if it's just a "good story," it's still worth infinitely more to me than a like, and as has been mentioned, a comment does have the added benefit of bumping the thread to the top. Basically a like button, or even the reaction menu, takes all the interaction out of it. There's no real connection made.

I don't think likes give the amount of satisfaction you're looking for - I wouldn't feel much from getting a bunch of these automated responses as opposed to some comments. As far as feedback goes, comments will always be more valuable than anything else. Likes, ultimately, are meaningless. If there's even the possibility that commenting would be jeopardized by a like button, I'd prefer not to have one. Look at sites like tumblr - so much content gets likes upon likes and yet very little meaningful feedback.
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Post by TomYi »

Alright, it looks like there are some more objections that I ought to respond to. Know that I'm not trying to be aggressive or insulting with my counterarguments. I'm simply seeking to strengthen my case.

OBJECTION #1: "Likes" are meaningless

I understand that the proponents of this objection are simply stating their opinion, but that opinion is demonstrably false. The human brain is that of a social animal, and it reacts positively to receiving a "like" from members of a group. This is practically common knowledge, and it is documented scientifically as well. Here is a study to help drive this point home.

OBJECTION #2: "Likes" do not convey information

Again, that's just not true. The pattern that a person leaves behind with their collective "likes" can say a lot about themselves and their preferences. It requires a concerted effort, but tracking somebody's "likes" can more effectively develop a clear picture of who they are than even a personal relationship with that person. Here's another study demonstrating this. The study involves computer models, but humans are also capable of noticing a pattern in the "likes" of their readers.

OBJECTION #3: Comments are better than "likes"

Of course they are. I don't deny that for one second (although I stand by my argument that some comments can convey little to no information at all). Comments are more meaningful, and they bump topics. That's just a fact. That being said, a "like" is still better than nothing, and the vast majority of readers are currently leaving nothing.

The problem (as I've stated before) is that the vast majority of readers are not commenting. I've made tons of posts that have gotten hundreds of views, and on average, less than 1% of those views results in any feedback at all. I am not alone in this trend. This has been brought up tons of times before, efforts have been made time and time again to try and mitigate this issue, and they simply haven't yielded a major change. Lurkers are not about to stop lurking, but perhaps they'll be more comfortable with leaving a "like".

This is no different from what we already do with our polling feature. I think we'd all agree that a comment in a question thread is worth much more than a vote in a poll, but we still allow polls, and they help present a clearer picture of what readers think. My Favourite Mouth Stuffing poll currently has 276 votes, but only 78 comments, and not all of those comments are actually answering the question. The votes present a very clear picture that is not conveyed very well by the comments. I don't see anyone objecting to this system of voting, so what makes it more acceptable than "reacting"?

OBJECTION #4: "Likes" could discourage comments

I understand this worry. It's actually my biggest concern with implementing a "like" feature. If the number of comments drop in favour of "likes", then the plan will have effectively backfired, and I can't know for sure whether or not that will happen. Although it is worth reiterating that most readers don't comment as it is, so a lot of authors don't stand to lose much at all.

The only way to know for sure is to test it out and see. We can always scrap it if it doesn't work.
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Post by Killua »

[mention]TomYi[/mention]
I just want to give you my personal opinion about your arguments. I can fully understand your point of view but I'm still not really agreeing with that.

I'm sorry that I'm not quoting, but I'm just on my phone and it takes an eternity to do the quoting right. So, I name your objection I'm referring to.

Objection 1:
Sure, there are studies. But this site is no common place where you upload lots of short stuff or pictures and see the likes as satisfaction. When I upload a picture or a short video, I'm glad to get a like on that. But when I write a story I put a lot of effort into it, and getting "just" a like compared to my effort is not really satisfying.
I don't know if others have the same problem, but when I write a funny comment on tiktok, facebook or whatever, at first, I was a little bit satisfied with the fact that people like that. But after few like it was completely uninteristing for me... and even for later comments I wasn't interested in that "boring number" at all. It's just a number that is increasing slightly... it's just boring for me. And it doesn't mean anything to me if the number say 50 or 100 or 500... after the first few likes I'm not interested in it at all.

Objection 2:
Well, the information I get out of it says 100... 50... or whatever. It tells me maybe that one story is liked more than the other but only if I published them pretty close in time to each other. And I'm definitely not interested in making an excel sheet to keep track of the progress in how many likes got Story 1 in the first month and how many likes got story 2 in the same period...
The information about tracking the preferences of the "likers" you mentioned is absolutly useless to me. Because I don't care AT ALL about the interests of those people who leave me a like instead of a comment. I'm not interested in writing a story more too THEIR liking when they don't even have the courage in telling me so. I want to write a story for those who are really like my story and therefore telling me so in a comment. Btw, to analyse the liking of someone, I would have to write down somewhere which "liker" liked which story of me... and I'm definitely not interested in doing so. Too much work for no benefit.
If I read a comment I know more what the people like because normally they are referring to it.
Since I joined this site I also found some people who read my comments and decided to chat with me because they found out we like the same things. But I can't really imagine that someone would do that by tracking back likes. Also the most lurkers are not interested in commenting and therefore mostly can't even chat... so getting information about them is, in my opinion, as useless as talking to my tree in the backyard and hoping he starts a conversation with me. (Again I don't want to offend you in any way. I just want to picture my way of thinking)

Objection 3
I agree that comments are a lot better than likes. But I'm not really sure if a like is so much more worth than nothing. The first few of them maybe... but after I know my story got a few of them, they don't mean anything for me anymore, so they are, after I received some of them, worth nothing.

In my opinion you can't compare views with comments. Some people like me are producing more than one view. E.g. when I don't finish a story in one go, when I have to do something in between, or get logged off, ... I'm always producing a new view. Also I'm often coming back to a thread I read when there is a new comment because I'm interested in the new comment the author got and I'm not sure if the author may published a new part or answered on a comment I wrote and just didn't tag me. So calculating a percentage for comments to view isn't really working. Especially for stories the cover many chapters.

A poll is also something else. It provides direct information by voting on a certain anouncement. But a like is not a vote that gives back usefull information to compare. The "liker" isn't voting anything. He just stay the story could be good... it doesn't say how good is defined by him. Also everyone has anothet judgement what is good for him. So there is no clear information. You can't find out if the one who liked the story, liked it more than another he read. And just the number of likes as tool to compare stories won't work because here are so many people with different interests that you can't compare one story with another as long as they have not the EXACT same topic. Bondagefreak made a voting about what kind of M/M stories people like...and it showed how different the likings of people are. So you can't even use likes to compare stories. It's just a number... like the number of views... it isn't provising much more information or at least not really more useful information

Objection 4
I'm really scared about that. But you say, if people start to stop commenting you could just take the like function away and everything would be as before? No way... sorry that won't work. If you take something away people are used to they usely are upset and not interested in changing their behaviour again, maybe even leave the bord or just end up as lurkes with opinions like "you removed the like function, so you don't want feedback anymore"
What I want to say with that is: after something is broken, you can't just repair it again. If people decided they don't want to comment anymore because "liking" is easier, they won't just change their behaviour again after the function is disabled. They rather decide to just read and lurk around.
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Post by bondagefreak »

When this thread came back from the dead, I promised to myself discreet or at least retain the same ambivalence about a possible "like" feature as in the numerous previous discussions we've had about this.

Some good arguments have been made on both sides.
[mention]Killua[/mention] makes a valid point about the consequences of removing such a feature once it has been installed, which is why if a trial period sees the light of day, it should be a short one (ex: 30 days) after which we all reconvene here and weight in on the results.

On the other hand, it bugs me to even entertain the possibility of such a short trial period, since it would entail more work for the board's principal caretaker [mention]chadmc90[/mention] who is already very generous with his time here.


Now, about the merits of this idea, I can't help but noticing how lots of the users who are also published authors on Deviant Art are staunchly against this idea, while those who aren't are in favour of it. Those who are rooting for the "like" feature need to understand where the naysayers are coming from.

Deviant Art already revolves around a "like" system (it's called a "favourite" there) in which readers lend their support to authors by "favouriting" the stories they enjoy reading.

Stories from authors there will normally receive a ton of likes but almost no comments.

Just to give you guys an example, my "vote stories" on this forum normally receive anywhere from 30-35 comments per chapter (in the form of "I vote for option B!" style comments). Those same chapters posted on Deviant Art will be viewed more times, earn me loads of "likes" but get 0 to 1 vote-comment...even though it's made VERY clear that no votes = no continuation chapter.

They just "favourite" the chapter, say nothing and move on. Which is utterly and completely pointless.


Regular non-vote stories which receive 10-20 comments per chapter here will usually receive none on DA (even though the likes/favourites are coming in aplenty).

Ex: a mighty good showing for a very popular author with over 1.5K followers on DA would be a story with 20,000 reads, 150 favourites/likes and 15 comments (half of which are the author's own replies to actual comments...which is just sad IMO). If you're an entry-level author there and have between 100-500 followers, you'd be lucky to get even 1 or 2 comments.


I believe the fear of such a system spoiling what we have here is at the core of why some users have cold feet in regards to a "like" system.

Popular written works on DA get a laughable amount of support compared to the popular written works on this board. Many of our new members (who are discovering this place thanks to some of us on Deviant Art) are positively astounded at the bustling activity and number of comments many tales manage to garner here.


Most high-quality tales on this forum do not get enough support. No one will contest this fact.
However, there is a legitimate fear that a "like" system will worsen the situation and turn us into the comment-free board that DA is.

We will never know without trying, and the only workaround to deal with [mention]Killua[/mention]'s legitimate concern would be to agree to a relatively brief trial version and regroup here to discuss the results at the end of it.
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Post by Killua »

bondagefreak wrote: 2 years ago Some good arguments have been made on both sides.
@Killua makes a valid point about the consequences of removing such a feature once it has been installed, which is why if a trial period sees the light of day, it should be a short one (ex: 30 days) after which we all reconvene here and weight in on the results.

On the other hand, it bugs me to even entertain the possibility of such a short trial period, since it would entail more work for the board's principal caretaker @chadmc90 who is already very generous with his time here.
Another question, besides the huge effort our admins have to put into this, is if a short trial period is going to show any results. As far as I learned during on my job, my collegues always needed a huge time to get used to anything new... and I somewhat beliefe that a short trial period won't show much effect on the comments. I suspect that this is more a slower progress. I don't think people would say from now to tomorrow I'm not commenting anymore. I guess they would more likely start to reduce it over time because they get used to "liking" as the new quick and easy way. At first maybe only on stories they normally would've wrote a shorter comment and over time I believe the "writing a comment is too much work right now... I'll give it a like maybe I write that comment later" kind of thinking would slowly find it's way in here. But the "I write it later" probably never happens. On the one hand because if they are too lazy to write it straight away they are most likely too lazy to write it "later" and on the other hand because if they waited some time they already forgot parts of the story and don't want to write the comment based on many things they've already forgotten.
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