About The New Forum Emoji Reactions - Just As Bad As The Old Thumbs Up Or Thumbs Down Vote [Merged]

[Trevor Boyer.6524]

People are logging into their alt accounts to stack negative post response emojis vs. people they are arguing with.

 

IE: Someone doesn't like your suggestion, so they log into their alt accounts and make sure to spam as many laugh or confused emojis as they can to make sure what you said looks bad. As much is obvious that this is going on when the new notification system shows you that you've somehow received 5 or 6 confused faces in the time span of 2 minutes, when there were no responses at all to your post several hours before or several hours after.

 

This is as bad as that old "thumbs up or thumbs down system" that eventually was removed for the same reason of people just spamming thumbs down from several alts to make a post look bad. These kinds of systems do nothing but propagate a lot of unnecessary toxicity in the forum.

 

The emoji responses need to be removed for this reason.

 

Having a simple system where you click "Like" if you like it or don't click "Like" if you don't like it, is better. The worst they can do is just not click like.

Edited May 2, 2021 by Trevor Boyer.6524

[Donari.5237]

I wouldn't have thought the laugh was negative, I'd use it to say someone had been very amusing in a good way.  The "sad" one is more iffy to me, I can see it genuinely used when someone posts about losing a loved one that played the game, but someone used it on my straightforward post about getting the stickies back up and this confused me.

 

I like ESO's options, actually.  Someone can say what you posted was Insightful, or Awesome, or they Agree with you.  Various forms of positive reactions.  "You helped me," "You posted something amazingly good," or "What you said!" are handy reactions when someone doesn't want to do a whole post just repeating what they found so neat.

[Trevor Boyer.6524]

30 minutes ago, Donari.5237 said:

I wouldn't have thought the laugh was negative, I'd use it to say someone had been very amusing in a good way.  The "sad" one is more iffy to me, I can see it genuinely used when someone posts about losing a loved one that played the game, but someone used it on my straightforward post about getting the stickies back up and this confused me.

 

I like ESO's options, actually.  Someone can say what you posted was Insightful, or Awesome, or they Agree with you.  Various forms of positive reactions.  "You helped me," "You posted something amazingly good," or "What you said!" are handy reactions when someone doesn't want to do a whole post just repeating what they found so neat.

Exactly.

 

With just the like button, the worst people can do is not click the like button. It's far less toxic.

 

Normally, if someone had said in the fractal/raid subforum: "Raids are too hard" and I had written a response that said: "lol! hahaha" it would get removed and I would get a warn point for trolling. But with the emoji system, I can just click a laugh face on that comment that is the same thing that won't get warned.

 

These emojis more often than not, are just being used to be nasty.

Edited May 2, 2021 by Trevor Boyer.6524

[Blood Red Arachnid.2493]

I'm never sure what these emojis are supposed to represent.  All of them can be taken as good or bad, so all it is going to do is spread confusion and animosity.  

 

I much prefer the old system of upvotes and downvotes.  Simple approval or disapproval.  Then I can lightly admonish somebody without having to deal with their usual nonsense that follows.  

[The Greyhawk.9107]

I'm not inclined to think it matters, honestly it's a rather silly thing to worry about.

[SoulGuardian.6203]

Let's see how many confused emojies I can get.

And... Go!

Edited August 31, 2022 by SoulGuardian.6203
😞

[choon.6308]

Welcome to the world of facebook and reddit emote toxicity. I hate them all. Reddit in particular is extremely toxic in all areas. A new player makes a post about how much they enjoy the game and asks a question about how to build or survive and do damage, gets bombarded with sarcastic trolls who downvote everything the poor new player says. It gives a horrendeous impression to the new player which eventually makes them leave the game before even reaching the level cap.

 

Thankfuly, there are chrome extensions that hide reddit's voting system and it made my life soo much tolerable. I never even see who downvoted what and that should be the gold standard for any forum.

Edited May 6, 2021 by choon.6308

[Danikat.8537]

I'm not sure how I feel about it overall.

 

I think it's better than something like Reddit's up/down voting, because it has absolutely no impact on how visible a post is. I also think it's better than the old system on this forum because there's nothing tracking a users total reactions, so reactions given will hopefully be based on the post rather than the person posting it and those who care about reactions will probably be more inclined to focus on why that particular post got that reaction rather than how many they've 'collected' over all.

 

I also agree that none of the reactions are inherently negative, but I think they could all be used negatively depending on context. For example if someone says they've had an awful experience with something and they're considering giving up on the game then 'thanks' or 'like' could be taken as "good, get out of here, we're better off without you!" Which is especially problematic because the person clicking the button might mean "thanks for starting a topic on this, I have the same problem but didn't want to admit to it".

 

The one reaction I don't like is 'confused' because I don't think that conveys anything useful on it's own. For that to be meaningful you need to say what about the post is confusing you. Especially when we've got a lot of posters whose first language isn't English, so they might not know if it's the idea itself which you find confusing or if they've worded it incorrectly.

 

I think it can be helpful to have a quick way of saying "I agree" or "I like this" because replying to say only that can be redundant, and it can act as a kind of informal poll, but then I start thinking if that's how I'm interpreting it there needs to be a 'disagree' button to balance it out and avoid a false sense of support when a topic has just gotten a lot of attention.

 

One thing which might help is to remove the anonymity. (Bear with me here.) I'm on another forum where if I click the like button it adds a note to the bottom of the post saying "Danikat likes this" and while I'm normally pretty free with clicking like on anything I find mildly interesting that does make me think twice about doing it in serious or controversial topics because while it still has the advantage of being quicker than posting to say I agree it's functionally the same. Most importantly I know everyone else can see that and I need to be prepared to defend that position if anyone queries it, so I'm more inclined to go ahead and post a reply explaining why I like it (and if necessary what parts I don't like), rather than just clicking the button and moving on. Which both helps avoid misunderstandings and furthers the discussion, which is after all what a forum is all about.

[maddoctor.2738]

When a post has a lot of reactions it will appear as "Popular Post" regardless of which type of emoji was used to react to. This means, posts that have many reactions will have greater visibility, which is all that matters. I also don't see an issue, nor a negative implication, when someone gives a laugh or confused emoji. They are by no means the same as a thumbs down.

[Danikat.8537]

9 minutes ago, maddoctor.2738 said:

When a post has a lot of reactions it will appear as "Popular Post" regardless of which type of emoji was used to react to. This means, posts that have many reactions will have greater visibility, which is all that matters. I also don't see an issue, nor a negative implication, when someone gives a laugh or confused emoji. They are by no means the same as a thumbs down.

Where do you see that? I haven't seen anything showing popular posts. I thought I had this new forum figured out but I keep finding out about things I'd never seen before.

 

Edit: Just found it. When a topic gets that summary bar under the 1st post showing numbers of replies, time, and top posters you can click an arrow on the right side to see popular posts. I'd never noticed that option before (personally I find that summary bar a bit pointless).

 

I don't think that has too much impact though, it's pretty hidden compared to up/down voting systems where popular posts are moved to the front of a discussion and unpopular ones are buried or hidden. (Which I also don't like because it jumbles everything up so responses are before the thing they're responding to and the discussion is impossible to follow.)

Edited May 6, 2021 by Danikat.8537

[The Greyhawk.9107]

2 hours ago, SoulGuardian.6203 said:

Right. I agree to a certain extent.

But what the OP is saying and I understand is that some people are easily influenced by the majority, and thus voting the same way or tending to have the same oppinion so they don't look bad or outcast.

Having people login in to several accounts just to make you look bad, therefore having others pilling up the negative down votes and "negative reactions" with emojis, is going to make people look bad, and regardless of if should matter or not, We can't pretend that to some it does have a negative impact.

For instance, future forum participation.

 

I've been using all kinds of forums since 2005, and there are some that can get extremely toxic, and a discussion can quickly escalate to full out war of insults.l, precisely because of what the op has posted about.

 

I would suggest ANet to restrict users to be able to have a forum account, only If you have a full account with them.

That way people wouldn’t create several accounts to purposely make someone look bad in the forums.

 

That way we can still use the emojis, but people won't abuse its feature.

When you say "full account" I presume you mean people that have a fully paid account as apposed to the free to play version, correct?  Not sure how I feel about that.

Edited May 6, 2021 by The Greyhawk.9107

[Imba.9451]

Honestly, I prefer a system that shows how much a post is liked and how much it's disliked in a clear way. Emojis can be interpreted in different ways, thus no clear feedback can be drawn from them. Aside from the trophy symbol (And even that could be interpreted negatively) and the heart, all others are basically abundant.

But thats reminiscient of our time. Wasn't youtube going to get rid of disliked as well soon? So nobody gets sad over some stranger on the internet disliking something?

[maddoctor.2738]

19 minutes ago, The Greyhawk.9107 said:

When you say "full account" I presume you mean people that have a fully paid account as apposed to the free to play version, correct?  Not sure how I feel about that.

Free to play players cannot post on the forums anyway. So the person using multiple accounts to "downvote" a post is someone that actually has multiple paid accounts

[The Greyhawk.9107]

2 minutes ago, maddoctor.2738 said:

Free to play players cannot post on the forums anyway. So the person using multiple accounts to "downvote" a post is someone that actually has multiple paid accounts

Imagine actually doing something like that, getting multiple paid accounts with at least part of the purpose for doing so to rustle some jimmies on the forum. 

 

Frankly, I'm the kind of person that there should be both an up and down vote button on comment sections and forums (or at least if you have the former you should have the latter).  Just maybe facing that objectively minor bit negativity might be good for people in general.

[Ashantara.8731]

The "Confused" option actually confuses me. 😄 The "Laugh" I often feel tempted to select when someone cracked me up with a comment (and let's face it, there are quite a few people with a healthy sense of humor around here) but usually go with the "Like" option instead.

 

"Sad" feels completely displaced (unless someone is reporting the death of a GW2 friend) and can be used as a passive-aggressive reaction, as seen by the example in the OP of this thread. 😉

 

So yes, some of the options are really weird and should probably be reconsidered.

Edited May 6, 2021 by Ashantara.8731

[SoulGuardian.6203]

😅😢😞

❤🗼

Enough said.

I will say no more.

Edited August 31, 2022 by SoulGuardian.6203

[Robban.1256]

1 minute ago, SoulGuardian.6203 said:

Is that so?

Then it is unbelievable the lenghts some people go to, just to downvote or attempt to ridicule another member of the forum, just because they have a different oppinion. 

Yes, https://help.guildwars2.com/hc/en-us/articles/115015898508-Guild-Wars-2-Free-Account-Features-

[jokke.6239]

27 minutes ago, The Greyhawk.9107 said:

Imagine actually doing something like that, getting multiple paid accounts with at least part of the purpose for doing so to rustle some jimmies on the forum. 

 

Frankly, I'm the kind of person that there should be both an up and down vote button on comment sections and forums (or at least if you have the former you should have the latter).  Just maybe facing that objectively minor bit negativity might be good for people in general.

Many people have alt account for extra login rewards.

But yes, it would be quite sad to use alt account to like your own posts 😄

Edited May 6, 2021 by jokke.6239

[mindcircus.1506]

On 5/1/2021 at 9:38 PM, Trevor Boyer.6524 said:

People are logging into their alt accounts to stack negative post response emojis vs. people they are arguing with.

How do you know these are alt accounts and just not multiple people using the confused button in a childish manner?

 

Either way... just emojis. Hardly matters.
I gotta think it's not something to get booty bothered about.

[Trevor Boyer.6524]

28 minutes ago, The Greyhawk.9107 said:

Imagine actually doing something like that, getting multiple paid accounts with at least part of the purpose for doing so to rustle some jimmies on the forum. 

 

Frankly, I'm the kind of person that there should be both an up and down vote button on comment sections and forums (or at least if you have the former you should have the latter).  Just maybe facing that objectively minor bit negativity might be good for people in general.

 

They do though. Most of the veteran players in this game care more than people seem to realize about patch changes. Most of them have access to several full paid accounts from people who have come and gone over the years who left them passwords ect ect. Some people also go out of their way to purchase multiple accounts under their own name for several in-game reasons. When these types of players see a suggestion they don't like and they want to make sure it looks stupid, they will go onto several accounts to spam negativity towards that thread/user. They will often use those alt accounts in actual written responses, to make it look like the alts are supporting their counter argument to the OP, all the while making the alts seem as if they think the OP is just stupid for even bringing up the suggestion or comment. They also do this when they want to make their own suggestions look GOOD. Just log into alts and act like a bunch of people showed up to support an idea.

 

To those of you who have never noticed this activity in just about every single forum on the internet, you really need to start paying attention to the obvious.

Edited May 6, 2021 by Trevor Boyer.6524

[JustTrogdor.7892]

My opinion is that most reasonable people will evaluate a post based on its content and not care about what little pictures might be at the bottom of it.   I understand a lot of people might only want validation.  But really I don't think a frown face or what ever is something to get worked up over if someone puts one as a reaction to a post.  But that's just me.

Edited May 6, 2021 by JustTrogdor.7892

[Trevor Boyer.6524]

2 minutes ago, JustTrogdor.7892 said:

My opinion is that most reasonable people will evaluate a post based on its content and not care about what little pictures might be at the bottom of it.   I understand a lot of people might only want validation.  But really I don't think a frown face or what ever is something to get worked up over if someone puts one as a reaction to a post.  But that's just me.

 

You guys aren't getting it.

 

There are TOS rules against trolling and derailing and spamming and attacks and harassment. These rules apply to text responses, but apparently not emojis. There is something wrong there.

[jokke.6239]

16 minutes ago, JustTrogdor.7892 said:

My opinion is that most reasonable people will evaluate a post based on its content and not care about what little pictures might be at the bottom of it.   I understand a lot of people might only want validation.  But really I don't think a frown face or what ever is something to get worked up over

Both have some positives and negatives.

Positives being that it's eaiser for developers to see what most people agree on.

Negatives being a smiley system can be used in a rude/sarcastic way. 

And I also (in my opinion) feel like the mob mentality can hurt a discussion/debate. A lot of people want to be with the crowd, it can affect individual thinking for a lot of people who want to fit in and be with the popular opinion.

I think it would be better to just have the upvotes/downvotes and have it visible to the devs only, to get the most useful feedback for the devs.

 

Edit: This opinion was mostly related to both upvote/downvote and emote system. I don't think it's the end of the world, but there's my thoughts on it ..

Edited May 6, 2021 by jokke.6239

[Luthan.5236]

Actually I couldn't care less about the emojis or the old thumbs up/helpful system. I barely notice this even exists.

[Blude.6812]

Wouldn't mind having a dunce cap emoji to use for topics that have been discussed and rejected/accepted. I am sure most here could name those topics. But I am quite happy to have more emotes here. A thumbs down would be welcome too.

Edited May 7, 2021 by Blude.6812