Liking / reccing - is it engaging enough?

[EarlG]

19. Thanks for the comments

Last edited Tue Dec 19, 2023, 09:39 PM - Edit history (1)

People have requested the ability to recommend replies for a long time, because they found it tiresome to have to reply "+1" to anything when they wanted to express agreement with a post but didn't really have a comment to add. That's why we added it to the software update. However, it is very "bare bones" at the moment, partly because I wanted to see how -- or if -- people would use it, and what effect it might have. I do have some observations.

The reason we didn't spend too much time on additional functionality for reply recs is because we weren't even sure if people would use the feature. However, since DU4 launched it seems to have become quite popular -- I run into threads all the time which have plenty of replies with 5+ recommendations.

Personally, I don't think it takes away from conversation -- it mostly serves to eliminate is a bunch of "+1" replies, which weren't adding anything previously.

However, there are a few negative effects:

1) Posting "+1" in reply to something you like also has the added effect of kicking the thread back to the top of the forum. But using the rec function on a reply does not.

2) In addition, posting "+1" in reply to something has the added effect of notifying the person being replied to. But using the rec function on a reply does not.

So it seems to me that the system itself is fine -- people are using it -- but it could be more effective in terms of what happens after the rec button is clicked, particularly in terms of the feedback it supplies to the person who is getting their post recommended. It seems that is where we could use some more work -- so that people are better notified when their replies are recced.

Off the top of my head:

1) We could make it so that reccing a reply automatically kicks a thread back to the top of the forum. However, this would mean that threads will "ghost kick" -- it might be confusing if people expect to be able to read new replies in a thread which has just kicked back to the top, only to find that there aren't any. (Also, the ability to recommend replies without kicking a thread might be seen by some as an upside, not a downside. If you don't like the OP and you're reccing a reply which criticizes it, you might not want the thread to kick.)

2) We could make it so that reccing a reply auto-posts a notification in the thread -- essentially this would be the equivalent of posting "+1" in reply to someone, except it would happen automatically when you click the rec button. However, this might get complicated if you want to change your mind and undo your recommendation. It might also add a considerable amount of clutter into threads. (Whether you think this is a good idea or not probably depends on how much you value +1 posts.)

3) We currently send a sidebar notification/add an item to your Feed every time one of your OPs gets a multiple of 25 recs (ie we send one every 25, 50, 75, etc.). We should also be able to do this for recommended replies -- say every 5 recs -- which would keep you up to date on which of your replies people are reccing. Unless there's a technical issue with this I can't think of a downside and this is probably something we could do.

4) We could potentially add a "recs" column to your Posts page, and have threads on that page kick to the top every time they are recced as well as every time they are replied to. Again, unless there are underlying technical issues with this, I think it could be worth exploring.

5) We can supply the names of reply recommenders on the single post view of a reply, similar to how we display recommenders on the "Thread info" page of an OP.

6) We could come up with a way to include "Greatest Replies" on the Greatest page, although it might take a bit of figuring out.

Those are a few suggestions for things we might be able to add to the reply recs function. It seems clear that people like the function and are using it, so it does seem like we should now work on improving it and making it more useful.