Originally Posted by
halls120
Facebook's real name policy is a joke. Trying to discredit the research post upthread on that basis is laughable.
It's not a matter of discrediting the research (which is interesting in its own right, simply inapplicable) but one of
several reasons why it's not applicable to the case at hand.
As for the real name policy being a joke, while some people can and do work around it,
most people who are actually active users use it as intended (either with a real name, or a consistent identity tied to their "real life") which is going to effect behavior online.
But you don't have any research to back it up, right? It's just opinion. In my opinion adding a like button provides no positive benefit, and instead, a negative impact.
Yes, and we've both stated it already up-thread, and at this point are (except on the question of the applicability of the research, which
intuition was kind enough to post) just repeating ourselves.
If you want to be more specific about
how there'll be a negative impact, feel free. As far as I can tell, virtually all the negatives presented have either been vague or based on extensions of the function that nobody's expressed an interest in.
So in the end, this all comes down to personal preference based on supposition and opinion, and because the majority of a tiny minority voted for it, FT should change what's been working?
ISTR it being pointed out up-thread that Talkboard got elected with a smaller minority, and as far as anyone's said this vote is purely advisory.
As for "what's working," some level of this functionality is working nicely on many many other sites. FT is a relatively creaky and dated-looking site, and if all we ever do is "change is bad" will continue to get more so. For those of us who've been using it for over a decade, as long as it remains
functional, that won't be a problem, but I have a suspicion that in the long run that will hurt new user acquisition and engagement.
Originally Posted by
intuition
1. I take the conclusions to be covering a more basic human interaction principle
In general, I don't disagree; I don't, however, see how the proposed "like" functionality here connects to that.
2. No, not really. But I think the like-system has some major disadvantages if applied to a discussion board like FT.
3. I think the ordinary poster sees the home of the thread as the audience - Post in the BA forum and the audience are people with interest in BA and who more or less share the tone and attitudes of that forum. The same poster would most likely post in a different way in another forum, and if his BA post is at risk to appear elsewhere, then that self censoring will affect the BA threads too.
Let's be clear here:
I think that's a reasonable concern, but what I don't understand is why you think either (A) a like button will increase the odds of posts being surfaced publicly, or (B) that even if they won't, people will assume they will.
To the extent that's (A) is concern, I think it would be very valuable to have a separate discussion about how these things are in fact surfaced and curated, and potentially talk about an opt-out.
I just don't see (B) but if it could be demonstrated, it's potentially a good argument. OTOH, that particular paper does nothing to connect its point to (B).
Originally Posted by
intuition
These 2 principles fits perfectly with a positives-only system on FT. The ideas to use the votes for other purposes than immediate feedback, makes the audience fuzzy.
Has any such idea been actively discussed in this thread? (I can see several people speaking against it, and nobody speaking for it.)
When poster understands that the post may appear somewhere else or be used for an alternate purpose, it will make some poster (male posters in general, as suggested by study) more careful and limited in their speech.
Once again, a fair point but I don't see the connection to the actual discussion of the "like" feature here, and something that's already possible (for example, anyone signed in can click on your user name and see all your posts/replies regardless of forum, already.)
And when snarky posts or posts by the clique leader gets all the likes, there is no reason for some posters to post a secondary view of a topic at all.
This has been raised before, and I think it's a reasonable case to consider, and it
is IMO more of a reason to be leery of of allowing down-voting. That said, I'm not sure how it's testable, and it could go very much the other way -- from what I can see* insiders are MORE likely to be comfortable actually typing up a note of agreement, while new people are more likely to keep silent, and mechanisms like "like" or for that matter the poll here, which
lower the barrier to engagement encourages them to become engaged.
(* no scientific study, but from 20 years on the internet at 10 on BBSes before that)
It would be
nice if we could turn off "likes" on some of the snarkier TravelBuzz type threads, as it will undoubtedly lead to some amount of additional pile-on support for some of the contentious subjects that inevitably turn into zoos (recline, window shades, passengers of size, etc) but since (A) that's impractical, and (B) those threads are already turning into zoos that very often lead to locked threads, I'm not sure how that could make it worse.
Actually, that's one thing that really ought to be checked on: would people be able to continue to "like" the post or replies if a thread is locked? Would be good to make sure they can't.