My issue with forum agrees is a lot lighter, I can take it or leave it but I find myself lately questioning whether they too hurt discussion, I know the main counterargument would be that it discourages low-effort "Agreed" posts but I start to wonder if it discourages responses entirely, especially when VGChartz is as low activity as it is now.
Are we not presenting people with the option of either thinking up a reply or simply slapping an "agree" on a comment and moving on? Because if I'm going to be honest, I've done the latter quite a bit, Lol. There have been times where I could easily write up a reply but out of laziness just slapped an Agree on a comment and moved on and I seriously doubt I'm the only one if we're being honest with ourselves, Lol.
I do appreciate every single one of my agrees, and I get that people want to show their support, but I have my doubts about if it helps or harms thread discussion and it is something I'm conflicted on. I was thinking a possible solution could be to change "Agree" into something more meaningful that actually has to have thought put into clicking it, something more along the lines of "This comment is my favourite/I love this comment" over something as light as "Agree" and I think that would change my mindset about how it's used.
Are we changing our behaviour, as a result of these systems, into "I'll just agree with this" instead of thinking of a written response.
It's possible someone could give me a convincing argument that it doesn't hurt forum discussion and has more positives, I'm not as against it as I am with the article upvotes/downvotes, my core issue with forum agrees is worry about discussion, my core issue with the article downvotes is it being used in shitty ways which discourages discussion/users and genuine annoyance, Lol.
Last edited by Ryuu96 - on 06 September 2025
