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i've said this in the past, but i'm wholeheartedly against adding any feature like that. i think i'd rather promote posting, rather than reactions - if you like a post and want to add something, posting is always better imo

i definitely get the idea behind not including reactions in that way, though i think for a tiny forum like this it wouldn't impact discussion much (yet).

the one thing i secondarily use 'likes' for is just as a simple way to log to someone that i've read their response, if i'm in a back and forth with them. for instance in a conversation if i hit 'like' and don't respond its sort of a tacit sign i don't have anything else to add.

But I think this is another reason one would be against 'likes'; they promote the mindless consumption of content, without as much thinking about why you find something interesting or not.

the other point i think i should make is i'd like to avoid "shouting into the void"-type posts. like for example if someone posts something that's on topic for the thread, and a bunch of people react with emojis. if you get that stuff happening enough, it just turns into people posting one-off messages with no kind of back-and-forth.

i get why reactions are nice to have, but i really don't care if you respond with "lol" or "yes OP i agree." shit-posting is absolutely a thing that's allowed here, no matter how low-effort the post is.

"this"

i might not have been very clear - i DO 100% agree that things like a like/thumbs up get in the way of having decent conversation online. because yeah the most disappointing kind of forum topic is one with only one post and 10+ likes on it...

I was talking about a situation where multiple people have already started talking to each other in a thread, and one of them wants to indicate they've exhausted that back-and-forth. sometimes i get antsy that someone else is just waiting on me to respond to them in order for them to keep posting about in the topic, so i'll leave a like or whatever to at least let them know i've read their response to me. what i was proposing was to find an alternate way to show/query whether someone else has seen your post yet or not.

true i do that all the time in texts lmao