Reaction Guidelines

[MARK0SIAN]

I think some of the new reactions are good, in particular it’s great to have an official way to thank someone for something rather than have to just use a ‘like’ for the task. 
 

However, I believe some of the reactions could benefit from some guidelines. I say this as I have seen a few cases where posts have been responded to with a confused or angry emoji but that has not then been followed up with a post in the thread offering a counterpoint or even explaining what it is someone finds confusing. I’d say this way of engaging with a thread/post doesn’t really meet the ‘Constructive’ aim we go for in our discussions, for example if instead of a reaction someone simply posted a one word response of ‘confusing’ to another post then we generally wouldn’t consider that engaging in a meaningful or constructive manner. 
 

It might be worth considering some guidelines for reactions such as if you respond with something like ‘confusing’ then please elaborate in a post what you find confusing as it may give the original poster an opportunity to clarify their earlier post. As it is, I can see reactions like ‘confusing’ being used to simply bombard posts you don’t agree with without having to offer any meaningful response of your own.

[Brother Tyler]

While I agree with you in principle, there's no mechanism to force members to post a reply that elaborates on their reaction, and the work required to do so is far beyond our resources as it would require mods to examine each and every reaction in each and every post to ensure that those that require explanations/elaborations have such an explanation/elaboration provided. At best, we might provide a best practices guide that suggests that members consider posting an explanation/elaboration of their reactions. This creates a gap, however, in that members might not understand that their reaction might be confusing to others.

At a bare minimum, members need to understand that a LIKE or THANKS reaction will garner a point for the member that posted the content. Members that post other reactions will indicate a willingness to provide an explanation/elaboration or discuss whatever it is that evoked the reaction by posting a reply in the discussion. If a member doesn't engage in the discussion by posting, however, I wouldn't worry about what emoji reaction they post.

We will be posting best practices guides, but they'll be rooted in practicality and not try to force members to do things that are unreasonable and which we can't reasonably enforce.

[MARK0SIAN]

A best practice guide sounds more like what I was thinking anyway so hopefully that will solve the issues. I like the reactions, I just don't want to see them become a glib and nonconstructive way for people to snipe at posts they don't agree with without providing any meaningful response themselves :)

[Gederas]

I'm just saying, the confused/angry responses without additional comment can be a way of a poster not feeling up to making a debate/argument over another poster's comment, and that they don't agree with said comment or said comment makes 0 sense to them.

 

Like for example, I'm not going to name names (as that would be rude), but there's one poster who's comments on viability and usability of units because they're a tournament player will likely only get confused responses from me, because they seem to be playing a completely different game of 40k to not just me, but everyone else in regards to that.

 

Also, isn't it better a poster just uses a reaction on a post as opposed to just inflating their post count by posting a three-word response that adds nothing?

Edited June 28, 2022 by Gederas

[sibomots]

I was looking at this also.

I tried to find something in the IPS docs but I think we're stuck with this situation that the Reactions available are universal across our site.

For instance, wouldn't it be rather excellent that in my Faction (Black Templar) there was a Reaction for "ZEAL" but it only was in BT.

Alas, this is not the case.  Reactions are universal across our site.

That doesn't mean the Admins cannot add in new Reactions.   The trouble is that once a reaction is added, I think if it gets removed later affects overall "reputation" because the site will remove spurious Reactions (due to the fact the old reaction is deleted).. so you may Pump up a lot of Zeal Reactions and then if we replace with "WAaagh".. bad things happen.  Oh well.

Contextual Reactions.  I doubt ever that IPS will do it.  Only in the vaporware.