There is a like button on the bottom of every post … but I noticed, even as the forum grows, not many posts are getting likes. Some are, in busier popular topics, but there’s … a kind of surprising overall general lack of likes on posts.
Now in and of itself, this is fine. Nobody is required to like posts! It is totally optional! I’m not asking because I want people to change their behavior – I don’t. You should do whatever you’re comfortable with, and that’s totally fine.
What I am curious about, is the thought process – if you don’t like posts as a general philosophy, why? Or if you rarely like posts? Is there something specific about liking posts that puts you off, or prevents you from doing it?
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Hmm. We could change the icon to something a bit less heart-like if @dchuk is keen. It’s quite easy to do. I wonder if there’s a good chia-themed “upvote” type thing, or we could do a simple upvote arrow, or the classic “thumbs up”. Any Font Awesome glyph can be used.
Personally, it generally comes as “did I strongly agree with this for whatever reason” or “extremely helpful to me” and depending “extremely helpful to others”.
I think the reasons I do not do it very often comes down to 2 things:
It’s not clear to me if this accomplishes anything other than a ++ on the counter. On reddit, for example, I know it means it’s more likely others will see the post because of the upvote. If the UI surfaced who liked a post more prominently, it might be more interesting?
The instagram heart, which it feels like it’s most similar to, has devolved into some sort of weird “why didn’t you like my post?” quite often so it makes me reluctant to participate in that sort of feedback loop. So, if it wan’t a heart, I would be more likely to push it?
I would prefer it if it was like a reddit upvote and it caused posts with lots of likes to somehow float to the top of the NEW list - particularly now that activity is starting to spike here.
No, the first time it was used was in 2013 at Boing Boing. But there is a keto forum I know of (and I think it’s the one you are referring to) that does use Discourse; they moved to a kind of idiosyncratic host so I hope their performance is OK.
… but I noticed, even as the forum grows, not many posts are getting likes. Some are, in busier popular topics, but there’s … a kind of surprising overall general lack of likes on posts.
or 
than a 
up arrow
