How should RPGWatch handle emote reactions going forward?

[Redglyph]

It's interesting to see people reacting with a like to the post, though, unless it's ironic.

When you write something, you usually expect a feedback from other people, a reaction or a reply. Is that an addiction or just a desire to communicate?

Seeing how long our threads often are and how often we run off-topic, I don't think there's any danger of us being lazy anytime soon.

 

[Taluntain]

Any users in favour of them are simply caught in the addiction loop but if they get a good old-fashioned real reply they will feel just as rewarded.

The thing is, many if not most posts don't really warrant "real replies", when the gist of such replies would be merely "I like your post." or "I find your post informative." and so on. The same is achieved with a reaction with a click and infinitely faster and easier to do and hence exponentially more frequently actually done. There is an aspect of technological improvement in cutting down the "me-too" post clutter and repetition and facilitating ease and speed of use that you are overlooking here as well.

And regardless of what someone's personal feelings about reactions might be, forum users largely aren't living in a vacuum with no usage of social media and/or other interactive platforms. Traffic on many forums is down considerably due to the vast amount of competition vying for people's attention today. The notion that removing one of the more popular aspects of social interaction will somehow make people like RPGWatch more and encourage them to post more is misguided. If anything, it would make it feel more like a relic of a bygone era and less appealing to posters in general.

 

[sakichop]

Well if SirJames is right then we have to keep emotes. I don’t want to go through the withdrawl .

I don’t really have a vested interest in the emotes either way so I’ll just roll with the majority.

 

[SirJames]

A relic of a bygone era.

 

[SirJames]

 

[Couchpotato]

He's not wrong old style forums are a relic of a bygone era. Social media, reddit, and discord have become the new normal. Even the Codex has embraced the future.

Heck it's even worse on the Codex that most on this site would flip out.

 

[SirJames]

All the emotes in the world won't make RPGwatch compete with Tiktok.

Maybe being a relic of a bygone era is the sites greatest strength?

When people get sick of the manipulation from big tech sites they'll have somewhere to go to avoid all that.

It's always been a niche.

 

[SirJames]

It might be interesting to disable them temporarily to observe the effects? Or maybe the damage is done and only the reaction junkies remain?

I feel like things got worse after emote reactions were added but it might be a coincidence. Lot's of users have left or stopped posting. Even if you told them emotes were gone I doubt they were actually aware they were the reason they started feeling differently. A few users have deleted their accounts, post-emotes, but eventually made new accounts and I don't think they were really aware of the problem - they just felt somehow depressed and discontent. Fortunately for them, upon return they were instantly showered with a great deal of emotes which started in order to show appreciation of their return. But what if the supply dried up? As with all addictions, there would be a withdrawl period but things would eventually return to normal. Maybe even some of the old posters who disappeared would return.

I'm not making this stuff up, by the way. This is all factual social media psychology. You've all seen it. Everyone addicted to their phones. My own family members can't even get though a movie without checking their phone 2 or 3 times. Sometimes they'll play a loud instagram video in the middle of a movie and I tell them to shut up with a glare but it's pretty futile - they'll often just go to another room to be alone with the phone.

I mean, if you don't want a relic why don't we all move to the Discord channel and save a few bucks on hosting? Wasn't it a relic you were trying to preserve?

Edit: There's even a "reaction score" on peoples profiles! You couldn't ask for a greater incentive of pandering posting or of something more misleading of their actual post content.

 

[Redglyph]

Edit: There's even a "reaction score" on peoples profiles! You couldn't ask for a greater incentive of pandering posting or of something more misleading of their actual post content.

I hadn't even noticed that. I remember it was plainly visible in the previous Watch, but here, I had to search through the links to find it.

The number of posts is always shown on the right, though.

No offence, but I think your views on the addiction are subjective. I agree it's a prominent mechanism on some well-known media websites where popularity is put forward and where influencers even earn money, but I think it's just a convenient tool here and I've seen that thought mentioned several times.

Although we're all subjective, so what about a poll to get an idea of the general feeling?

 

[Redglyph]

Regarding the ignore feature, it really is a problem that it omits ignoring reactions completely, so it's of no use in a situation where you primarily don't want to see another user's reactions to your posts. This has been requested for implementation in XF years back, but there's no sign of it happening anytime soon (if ever). Which is really odd, because sensibly, nobody who puts a user on ignore would want to continue seeing their reactions either. So I'd treat this as an oversight, but either the XF devs have their own strange ideas about this, or just don't care about it (more likely).

There is an addon that would enable the ignoring reactions functionality, but it also comes with some other features that we might not really need (though that can always be turned off). It's 90 bucks, but we could raise that in donations easily enough if there was interest among members to have this implemented.

Alternatively (and seeing the trolling continues), is it technically possible to forbid a user from using the reactions? Like a temporary ban, only just for that feature? From old XenForo posts, I don't think so, but I'm not sure.

 

[Taluntain]

I hadn't even noticed that. I remember it was plainly visible in the previous Watch, but here, I had to search through the links to find it.

It's really quite irrelevant, so we're not showing it in posts (though it is visible in the username overlay card on click). But only being displayed there and on profile pages, it really gets pretty much zero attention.

is it technically possible to forbid a user from using the reactions? Like a temporary ban, only just for that feature?

Sure, that's possible to do.

 

[Redglyph]

It's really quite irrelevant, so we're not showing it in posts (though it is visible in the username overlay card on click). But only being displayed there and on profile pages, it really gets pretty much zero attention.

That's a good thing it's not too visible, IMO. It puts posters on a more equal level and it makes reactions more a tool than a sort of achievement. It could be removed, I suppose, but I doubt anyone really cares.

Sure, that's possible to do.

So that's possibly another tool in the moderator's box and for option 2. I'm still baffled by the whole thing.

 

[SirJames]

[delete]

 

[notdart]

Personally i think my view align with @Couchpotato that this is a waste of time. If one is so thin that a virtual emote causes havok well... worse things happen on the internet.

Having said that I also think there is little value in @arthureloi down voting a post based on poster and not on content as it lacks value; after all even someone i dislike can occasionally make a valid point. Naturally it is the administrator @Taluntain decision how he wants to deal with this issue and how much time he wants to spend on it.

For the record i will say from my observation that @lackblogger has started more than his fair share of flame wars by expressing strong opinions sometime on tangent irrelevant threads. That doesn't necessary justify an automagic down vote but such action can of course encourage such behavior as a consequence.

 

[lackblogger]

For the record i will say from my observation that @lackblogger has started more than his fair share of flame wars by expressing strong opinions sometime on tangent irrelevant threads. That doesn't necessary justify an automagic down vote but such action can of course encourage such behavior as a consequence.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but your post here is a tangent to the topic and is an obvious attempt to start a flame war, right?

 

[Taluntain]

Do refrain from that.

 

[HellRazor]

If the emotes are causing enough problems to warrant all this concern and discussion, just get rid of them. Problem solved, and no extra work for the moderators to try to "police" them. I mean, I don't see anyone making any arguments for why we need them to begin with.

 

[Taluntain]

You haven't read this thread, then.

 

[HellRazor]

I read the entire thread. Most of it is debate on the best solution to the "problem". But it didn't seem to me anyone cared much if they were kept, at least I don't recall any compelling arguments to that effect. Maybe I'm wrong, but I'm not going back and re-reading four pages just to find the one or two people who think emojis are the bee's knees and a "must have" forum feature.

Regardless, IMHO, if the emojis are causing a problem big enough to cause concern among the mods, they should just be turned off. They don't add a whole lot to the quality of dialogue on this forum. I've never even noticed them, to be honest. If they are easily abused, hurt people's feelings, and make the moderators' lives more difficult, just shut them off.

The whole topic is kind of hilarious to me. A lot of angst over nothing. Facebook emojis would probably drive some of these guys insane.

If you go with #2, be prepared to have the same minority of users who already don't get along and/or who can't get along with others and/or are just here to troll other users (and probably already cause headaches for the moderators) constantly crying to the mods about how User X keeps posting a "rolling eyes" emoji on all their posts. (God, even just saying that sounds so immature and childish, but here we are). This is what assholes will do to piss other people off because posting something like a personal attack will probably get them banned. It's not a "forum feature" problem, it's a USER problem, and likely it's a very SMALL number of users who abuse the feature. Personally, I think it's a huge waste of time trying to moderate something like emojis, but if the consensus is that this a good use of the volunteer moderators' limited time, go for it. I don't really care about the emojis either way.

You haven't read this thread, then.

 

[SirJames]

Ummm....

I got into a weird funk yesterday. I kept thinking about ancient relics of a bygone era or something and got compltely black-out drunk and called old friends I hadn't spoken to for years and all this crap.

Sorry if I posted some weird shit. I have no fucking idea what happened last night. There's a hole in the wall and everythings a mess and this headache might kill me.