Liking / reccing - is it engaging enough?

[EarlG]

32. Thanks for the thoughts

Like so many things on DU, the current rec system is built upon previous systems that gradually fell by the wayside over the years. A long time ago recs on OPs were anonymous and people would often get bent out of shape wondering who recced threads which they disapproved of.

That problem went into overdrive after we introduced the "unrec" system which allowed people to essentially downvote a thread. Threads could not be "unrecced" below zero, but if you thought a thread was crap you could "unrec" it and essentially cancel out someone else's rec.

Again, this system was anonymous, so it generated a tremendous amount of meta-discussion as people were constantly whining about the unnamed individuals who either recced a thread they didn't like or unrecced a thread they did like. For so many threads, the first reply would often be "WHO UNRECCED THIS??" followed by a bunch of snide comments about trolls. It was pretty lame, and after some time we did away with the unrec system.

As part of the removal of the unrec system and also the transition to DU3 back in 2011, we decided to make recs public (and other things too, like voting in polls.) This was done in part because one of the driving forces behind DU3 was our experiment with "radical transparency" and the introduction of the original Jury system. Some of that experiment remains, but a lot of it was changed when the Jury system was revamped in 2016.

We decided to keep recs public though, and the reason is pretty simple -- if you are recommending something, then, well, you're giving a recommendation. You're telling other people, "Hey, I think you should check this post out because it's worth reading." And so it seems to us that it sort of goes against the spirit of the system if you want that recommendation to be anonymous. Can you truly recommend something if you simultaneously don't want to be associated with the thing you're recommending? (And also bear in mind that we're talking about being extra-anonymous here, because most DUers are already posting under pseudonyms.)

Ideally each member's list of recommendations (found on your Recommendations page) should be a list of threads which you're proud to let other people know about. Recommendations pages are public -- if you look at someone's recommendations page, it should give you a good idea of the kind of things that member is interested in. Even better -- if you like someone's posts and you check out their Recommendations page, you might find other threads of interest to you.

Anyway I'll wrap up this long winded response now, but the bottom line is that we think the current public Recommendation system works fine as it is and while there may be individual issues here and there, we have not seen any widespread problems with people getting hassled for their recs. So we're likely going to keep recs public for now, unless we see a good reason to change the system.