Discourse has two virtues. It doesn’t sort by likes, and it doesn’t have dislikes. Sorting by likes works in a place like Quora, where your are looking for “the best answer”, not for discussion. It is terrible for actual discussion, though. And while it’s reasonable to see a post and think, “yes, that’s exactly what i wanted to say”, and not really have much to add, if your disagree with a post you ought to be able to explain why.
I have probably made up content from time to time so i didn’t post a raw, “i agree with you” post, which feels dumb. Was that added content added value, or just padding? Probably some of both. Sometimes the lack of an easy “like” button has probably pushed me to engage and come up with real discussion.
I do like to be able to “like” a post to thank someone, though. I miss that here.
Yes, I’ve also been on the net since USENET days, and on bulletin boards before the internet. So have a number of people here.
“Clout chasing like you described is very rare”… No, was very rare before like buttons, which clanged things considerably on many sites.
Not quite the same thing but the Dope in the olden days was very cliquish.(it still is cliquish, except now it’s more of the so called PC type) If one person in a clique posted something you could almost guarantee all the other clique members would chime in. It was especially bad if the cliques had a obvious leader. I’m sure long timers should be able to figure out who I’m talking about, and I’m not going to name names.
Apparently there is a “like” button on iPhone’s SMS text messaging facility. Which pisseth me off greatly.
I send somebody a 4 paragraph text with correct punctuation, spelling, etc. I get back
Liked “{My entire 4 paragraph post}”.
Screw that noise. I’d far rather they’d used their words to say “Agreed.” or “Thank you.” than to clog our ongoing conversation with copies of my words on their side of the ledger.
Even worse is some people use it as a general sort of vague affirmative. So when I receve a “liked …” back, did you mean “Yes, you agree with my thinking”, or “Yes, you’ll actually do what I asked you to do”? When that sort af vague head-nod happens the only thing to do is re-ask even more explicitly. Or drive over to their house and flush their phone down the shitter.
That sounds awful.
If only there was a way to, potentially, limit the effect of that ‘chiming in’ to something easily ignored, like something under the post instead of a series of posts. Like a button or … hey that’s catchy, a button of like!
Yes, like the button I suggested above, well before your oh so clever post, maybe something that works perfectly for both sides and doesn’t require any changes to the board because it already exists. And doesn’t show up on any ones post. But for some reason, nobody of the many that want to use a like button uses the one we already have. Maybe they don’t need a like button after all.
Umm, because we don’t actually have a like button.
Um, yes we do. If you read the thread, you would see I posted it above along with the reasons it works for both sides.
If we have a like button I need you to point me to it. I use an iPad, chrome. I think SD light.
A: I’ve been reading the thread all along.
B: You get to decide what works for both sides?
C: Anything that results in a post being made is by definition not the kind of button that’s being asked for.
He’s referring to the thumbs-up emoji, which is obviously not a like button.
I believe it was turned off shortly after we migrated, and only the discobot can currently “like” a post.
Thanks, both of you, for getting back to me. I am less confused now. At least I’m not missing out on a “like” button. FWIW, I’d vote for not having one. There are many reasons I’m here and not posting on FB.
Your iPhone-using friends probably aren’t even aware that this is happening.
Everyone in my extended family has an iPhone; I’m the sole outlier. When I started getting that “Liked [entire text of message]” garbage, I asked why on earth they were doing that. They had no idea what I was talking about; they were just tapping “like,” and didn’t realize that an Android phone wouldn’t have this proprietary iMessage feature.
They’ve mostly stopped doing it, but they occasionally forget. 
Oh, how incredibly annoying. I hate the iMessege thing, and all the ways it plays badly with anyone outside of the iWorld.
Well, you can look them up, they are standard Unicode emoji. 
and 
? I recommend https://emojipedia.org/ as a reference for this it’s pretty fun! It’s also fun to compare how emojis look visually in different operating systems and platforms.
The plugin itself has a default set of emoji reactions but it can be customized by the site operators to taste.
Protip based on your operating system, there are emoji hotkeys. In Windows 10 it is Win+. … on Mac it is (apparently, I don’t use Macs) ctrl+cmd+space. Then you can search for emojis by name.
And yes! This is SUPER annoying, though it works seamlessly in the perfect world where everyone is on iOS devices 
I like the Android OS, but the hardware it’s on (hello Qualcomm monopoly) is, sadly, just… utter crap.
I don’t know their names, and there are a very large number of unicode emoji. How can I look them up? Is there an easier way than scanning the entire emoji list?
Well, I can tell you the far right one is well known, and pretty much looks like what it is: hug. so I type “hug” in the emoji dialog after pressing win+. as I am in Windows 10.
The other one, I don’t know what it is… a confetti ball? 
ah yes, typing “confe” gets it, at least in Windows . Let me try my iPhone. Yeah, they just added emoji search (thank god!) in the latest version of iOS and indeed, pressing the emoji button on the on-screen iOS keyboard and typing “confe” in the search field gets a few confetti related emoji.
So there’s a mapping of words to emoji, but it varies by operating system, and some are certainly more obvious than others…
Bolding mine. You missspelled “Apple products”.
They’re not bad products as such. But their deliberate incompatibility, designed with profit malice aforethought, puts them beyond the pale. Literally. As in “banished beyond my defensive perimeter”.