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Forums - Website Topics - "Likes" Enhancement

 

Should "Likes" display the list of users?

Yes! 51 63.75%
 
No! 29 36.25%
 
Total:80
deskpro2k3 on 21 April 2018

I don't think a list is necessary.

If you agree with a post you just like it and move on. It's like a no strings attached kind of thing.



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Aeolus451 on 23 April 2018
VGPolyglot said:
Aeolus451 said:

This is a forum where we can converse about most topics and we do. Even in the video game related threads, quite a bit of controversy happens with dissenting  opinions. We honestly don't need extra drama and potential witch hunts started over someone liking a post. Whenever there's a "like" feature in forums/social media, it's anonymous for users to like something in general. That's the case for the vast majority of forums/social media. There's no reason to want to know who likes something unless you want to use that against them in some way. I meant persecuted in that way btw. 

Facebook lists who likes the posts, same with Instagram. There are also forums that show who likes the post, for example HFBoards does.

Well, no shit. How did you miss "That's the case for the vast majority of forums/social media"? 



Aeolus451 on 23 April 2018
Hiku said:
Aeolus451 said:
The whole point of a like/dislike feature is being able to conveniently agree anonymously. It's needed for controversial posts.

Instead of like system, why not go with "I agree" and "I disagree"?

The worlds most famous Like system (Facebook) is not anonymous. It's definitely not the whole point of a system like that.
The primary reason for it is to "effortlessly" show support or agreeance with a comment, and compile them all in one place for convenience. Anonymity is a separate aspect.

Aeolus451 said:

Anonymity allows for true honesty. The vast majority of people won't be honest if they know that they'll be persecuted for agreeing with a person who expressed a dissenting opinion. It's one of the reasons why we protect the identity of voters  and who they voted for from being public. 

We can agree to disagree on a dislike option.

And it allows for more dishonesty, which tends to be the bigger problem on sites like these.
Maybe I think a certain athlete that plays for an opposing team is very good, and would never claim otherwise. But I see a post nitpicking on his mistakes, ridiculing, and making him out to be far worse than he obviously is.
Obviously this is done to troll the fans of this team or the athlete in a dishonest way, rather than express one's honest opinion about him. Hitting "Like" on that comment, even when you KNOW it's not true, just to troll a fanbase, is that true honesty?

Definitely not. Because the intention of the like differs from the context of the actual post. Instead the "like" is falsely validating an opinion you don't actually agree with.
Are there times when anonymity could prompt a person to genuinely support a post they normally wouldn't? Sure.

But trolling and instigating are far more of a problem on sites like these than having an opinion you're too ashamed to acknowledge openly. (And often times there can be a good reason for that.)
There is a good reason for why we generally put more value behind opinions in our society when someone can put their name behind them.
To be honest, if there were people here who for example support a rather hateful ideology, I'd rather they stand for it than them "highfiving" each other anonymously, just to send a hateful message to certain groups.

To summarize, there are some positives with anonymity, but they're far outweighed by the negatives due to the nature of the internet. Trolling and instigating are more of a problem on sites like these, that moderators ultimately have to deal with.
If you want to come out about something you're not comfortable sharing here, there are usually forums and support groups for that elsewhere. But let's not make it easier to instigate on VGCZ.

Wrong. It allows absolute honesty when people can agree/speak openly without consequences. That happen when a witch hunt party has a list of names. Again, the only reason why someone would want no anonymity online is so they can hunt down anyone who's offensive, has a dissenting opinion/guilty of wrong think, etc in order to punish them and dissuade others from being open about what they think. It's authoritarian and will always bite you in the ass.



fatslob-:O on 23 April 2018
Hiku said:

You're not explaining how I was supposedly wrong.
Allowing for more honesty does not mean it doesn't also allow for more dishonesty. The two are not mutually exclusive.

But I will tell you what you are wrong about, and why:

"the only reason why someone would want no anonymity online is so they can hunt down anyone who's offensive, has a dissenting opinion/guilty of wrong think, etc in order to punish them and dissuade others from being open about what they think. It's authoritarian and will always bite you in the ass."

If someone makes a post about how great Suikoden 2's story is, I'd love to know who feels the same way. There are many times when I've wanted to say that "I agree" with someone, but because I had nothing more to add, I didn't do it because I didn't want to spam up the page. But if there's a like button, I'll hit like.

Problem solved, people should express those thoughts in the thread and likes should only be viewable to the author of the liked posts at most. For the most part, the names of the users who liked the post should stay anonymous since more transparency would only breed discourse along these boards with multiple faction groups ...

When we have some posters here who are extremely divisive, the like system only serves to feed into negativity and further enforces echo chambers ... 

This community doesn't have a majority but it sure as does have a strong plurality ... 



fatslob-:O on 23 April 2018
Hiku said:

If I'm not the author of the Suikoden 2 comment, I can't see who agreed with it.
And as TalonMan said in the other topic, and I agree, there have been many times where I wanted to express that I agree with someone, or like something they said, but refrained from doing so if I don't have anything else to add. So problem is not solved there.
More transparency with the like system should not breed more discourse for the same reason people refrain from posting things they don't want to be associated with. Because they know others can read their posts, and in this case see their likes, they'll refrain from doing it.

There are positives with anonymity, but I argue that due to the nature of the internet, the negatives are more frequent. How do you think these console war discussions would look like if there were no moderators on this site? Many people behave only because there's accountability.
When people who have been banned come back with new accounts, they generally don't use that newfound anonymity to behave well.

Console wars are a thing on here if I'm not mistaken so a transparent like system would be abused by group think on multiple sides of the fence which only raises future potential tensions for those that don't subscribe to the group think on here but another case I would like to point out is the "one man army" trying to strong arm themselves up against a section of a community on here which aims to demean the single poster by "teaming up" on their favourite side to give their group the numbers advantage by perceptively making their opposing user(s) less legitimate with little or no likes ... 

My concern is not about the individuals specifically but rather it's about community wide abuse or to put it more apt, the "tyranny of the majority" where the community makes use of the tool (transparent like system) to implicitly ostracize either groups or especially individuals ... (transparency makes that confrontation far more explicit and it could ruin or change perceptions on a lot of online relationships especially when you can like posts "shaming" other posters here)

A transparent like system makes discussions far less inviting when you are clearly dealing with a "side" instead of a single poster ... (transparency is arguably a regression since behaviour is more likely to revert back to tribalism) 



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The_Yoda on 24 April 2018

I am a fan of anonymity for the likes. To some degree or another we are nearly all anonymous on this site anyway, we have a user name (that I have yet to see be someones real full name) and some generic gender/age/region information if you look at someones profile.

I kind of like being able to be lazy and just hit a like rather than replying to someone's post with agreement. If I think they said something extremely clever then I'll go the distance to reply ... typically.

I too share another user's concern that a list of who liked a post would further clutter the site (not that it is really bad or anything) and if the list is implemented I would prefer to see that list hidden by default with a "show" button or some such next to the like button that will show who liked the post for those few that I think would be interested. If that didn't happen you could still block the element. This would be most important on the mobile version of the sight I would think where screen space is more precious.

If the whole "well my post got more likes so I'm right" fear turned out to be founded couldn't a rule against such posts be made?



CrazyGamer2017 on 24 April 2018
TalonMan said:

I know there have been mixed views on the new "likes" implementation - in fact, based on the recent poll that @monocle_layton ran, the site is almost split in half on the topic, which is pretty incredible.

At this point, it's fair to say the "likes" are going to stay - so the next question is, what else do we want to do with it? I can tell you straight up, there will absolutely not be a "dislike" button added - it's just not happening. I will be adding notifications for them when I get some time to do so, so that the author receives alerts to any new "likes", and I already added functionality that allows users to "unlike" any post that they may have "liked" inadvertently.

So the next borderline question, is whether or not to display the list of users that "like" a post or not (and that's what this poll will be about). I'm of a mixed mind on the issue and can see both the positive (and negative)i, and that's why I figured it might be best to leave it to the community to decide whether we do it or not. I will say that if the consensus is to, in fact, display the list of users, I am going to erase the current stats and allow for everyone to start over (with the advanced knowledge that their "likes" will become public).

 

The fact you said there will absolutely NOT be a dislike button added is worthy of a like, which I just gave you

A dislike button as I said before is a coward way for someone to express themselves, if someone does not like what you say let them explain why in a reply rather than hide in the shadows. You already have this problem on the "news" section of VGC at the left side on the home page. There people can like and dislike and it can sometimes be annoying as too many dislikes literally bury your post (which is even worse) and you don't know who disliked or even why...

As for the like button, displaying the list of likers or notify you when one of your posts has been liked makes total sense and would be totally logical. If you like a post, you want the poster to KNOW that you like his/her post, obviously. That way we don't have to "waste" a post just to say "I agree with you" if we don't have anything else to add to the debate. So yeah, I'm totally for a non anonymous like implementation.



CrazyGamer2017 on 24 April 2018
kljesta64 said:
dont display likes unless you want a civil war.

This logic only applies to dislikes.

But how is a like going to start a war on the forum???

If I like what you say and you know I do, what are you going to do? Attack me? Cause, how dare I like what you said?



Aeolus451 on 24 April 2018
Hiku said:
Aeolus451 said:

Wrong. It allows absolute honesty when people can agree/speak openly without consequences. That happen when a witch hunt party has a list of names. Again, the only reason why someone would want no anonymity online is so they can hunt down anyone who's offensive, has a dissenting opinion/guilty of wrong think, etc in order to punish them and dissuade others from being open about what they think. It's authoritarian and will always bite you in the ass.

You're not explaining how I was supposedly wrong.
Allowing for more honesty does not mean it doesn't also allow for more dishonesty. The two are not mutually exclusive.

But I will tell you what you are wrong about, and why:

"the only reason why someone would want no anonymity online is so they can hunt down anyone who's offensive, has a dissenting opinion/guilty of wrong think, etc in order to punish them and dissuade others from being open about what they think. It's authoritarian and will always bite you in the ass."

If someone makes a post about how great Suikoden 2's story is, I'd love to know who feels the same way. There are many times when I've wanted to say that "I agree" with someone, but because I had nothing more to add, I didn't do it because I didn't want to spam up the page. But if there's a like button, I'll hit like.

 I already explained why you're wrong. I'm not trying to change your opinion but to show a side of this to others who might be on the fence on this. Anonymity allows for the highest degree of honesty. That's self-evident. People are multifaceted. They have a multitude of opinions and sides to themselves that they wouldn't show under normal circumstances. It's not dishonest in any way to express those opinions or side of oneself under a cloak of anonymity. It's a means of protection from mob mentality. People can still like a statement even if the post was intended to troll or to be mean.

So you want to know who likes a post about suikoden? Sure..... That's so benign that it must absolutely be true. I'm not buying that especially since you already said the opposite in the reasons why you think anonymity is bad. You know as well as I do that we talk about alot more than just innocent video games posts and that's what we're actually talking about in terms of liking posts.



CrazyGamer2017 on 24 April 2018
Hiku said:
the only reason why someone would want no anonymity online is so they can hunt down anyone who's offensive, has a dissenting opinion/guilty of wrong think, etc in order to punish them and dissuade others from being open about what they think. It's authoritarian and will always bite you in the ass."

Except this does not apply here.

Your argument is correct in REAL LIFE. And that's why in real life when you vote for a political candidate your vote is anonymous so that nobody can hunt you down for your vote.

But here we are anonymous to begin with. I'm sure your real name is not HIKU...

This place is a place to debate and in order to debate everybody must put forward their arguments. But if you disagree or dislike or even like something and don't explain why or don't even let others know that you did or why you did it, you are killing the very meaning of gathering in a place to debate ideas.

Here you see me disagreeing with you, explaining why and allowing you to reply cause my disagreement is not anonymous. So what now? Are you gonna hunt me down? How do you think you could even do that?  Or should I just have disliked what you said (if the dislike button had been implemented) without explaining to you why or even letting you know I disagree with you? I see no point in that.