Give us a "dislike" functionality

While everyone can “like” a posting, no one can “dislike” it. This is a bit sad. How to react to, let’s say, “news: 100 people died”? I feel a bit worried about “liking” it as I would on Facebook.

I know this has been discussed in the bugtracker for a long time, but the community is still waiting for a solution. I can’t see anything that would decline a “dislike” item (except “we’re all in a happy wonderland here” which might fit a kindergarten but not a social network). :slight_smile:

Also, as Facebook doesn’t have Dislike, a lot of malware has evolved, promising to add that but spying users instead. Maybe another good reason to include a Dislike link by default.


Note: This discussion was imported from Loomio. Click here to view the original discussion.

Could you please explain how a dislike button could prevent the users from “a lot of malware”? Totally don’t get the point…

The main reason the dislike button was removed is the fact that just hitting dislike is sort of spitting on someone and not letting know why. If you really dislike a content or a story, you can easily express how and why you dislike it using the comments field below a post. That’s the main reason we have such nice discussions in the comments, I guess…

I’m kind of on the fence for the dislike thingy. Not sure it works for social media status updates. Works fine for places where content is voted up or down.

Doesn’t our schema support it already due to historical reasons?

Could you please explain how a dislike button could prevent the users from “a lot of malware”? Totally don’t get the point…

Some facebook application or browser addons offer you to add a “dislike” button to facebook.com. Unfortunately, they ask for your facebook ids and often steal the account :stuck_out_tongue:

@flaburgan not quite sure what people clicking on malware has anything to do with adding a dislike button though :wink:

The main reason the dislike button was removed is the fact that just hitting dislike is sort of spitting on someone and not letting know why. If you really dislike a content or a story, you can easily express how and why you dislike it using the comments field below a post.

Exactly. This may be a ‘happy wonderland’ as Cthulhux puts it, but it works well. Just look at Youtube for the environment with a dislike button.

The existence of malware in Facebook is irrelevant to whether or not diaspora implements a dislike button or indeed any feature.

I think a dislike button is such a bad idea. It adds nothing, and detracts from actual conversation. I think the like button also has a negative impact on actual interaction, and would ‘like’ it to be removed. But definitely don’t add a button specifically for negative interaction - that’s just asking for trouble. If you really like a post, what’s stopping you saying so? You know, in words.

Nooo, the like button is the best invention that social media has ever done :slight_smile:

Btw, this should be in feature proposals, but cannot move it. Thought Sean made me some general admin :stuck_out_tongue:

A ‘like’ button is great for targeting advertising - otherwise useless. :stuck_out_tongue:

Good idea to move this thread. Hope you can find out how.

I doubt it’s possible to move a discussion… I’m just about creating a proposal so we can vote here :slight_smile:

Proposal: Bring back the Dislike button

Should we bring back the dislike button as @Cthulhux proposed?


Outcome: Voting result: 49:3. I think it’s fair to announce we (as in “the community”) would not like having a dislike button.

Votes:

  • Yes: 3
  • Abstain: 8
  • No: 49
  • Block: 0

Note: This proposal was imported from Loomio. Vote details, some comments and metadata were not imported. Click here to view the proposal with all details on Loomio.

@dennisschubert it’s possible to move discussions - I could move this to the packaging subgroup but not any others :slight_smile:

Can we have a more general discussion about interaction before to vote on this?

During a time, there was no like but a pin action in diaspora. This allowed you to show your interest without having a position (like or don’t like) and especially this add the post in your “my activity” stream (like the like action now).

I found this concept interesting, this solve the problem of “100 persons were killed” “like”. Someone know why the name changed?

Yeah I liked the pin thingy, though some people thought it was confusing.

See no reason why we cannot vote though.

If we are going to give a dislike button then we need to also give a “both up- and down-voters are trolls, paid and unpaid respectively” possibility to vote middle ( or yellow ) in which case you are sort of agains both the up- and down-voters… which is accomplished currently quite nicely by not liking a post at all. Same action goes for “didn’t enjoy this” feelings about some post. No like and no reshare are enough negativity.

the use of the heart symbol, as much as i like it, sometimes it does seem odd

i may read a post about global climate change, and like it because i find it informative and well written

i sort of have to trust that others will realize my heart does not sign happy about the issue :slight_smile:

Maybe this thing is more complex than just 0/1.
Saying “I like” in general might mean the acceptance and like of the content. But in social networks it can also be some kind of a thankyouforsharing and encoupled from the content itself.

The question is, what we like to realize with the (dis)like itself:
Should it motivate users to post similar content again?
Should it be some kind of respect/bounty for the work of sharing the current content?
Should discussions/votes be realized with a simple yes/no solution?
Should we allow to post your feelings with such kind of features or would be a comment a good existing solution?

IMHO the lack of dislike function on Facebook is more drastical, as there is a heavy mix of content that is postet by the people you follow (private, work, kittens, …). Here at D*, we make heavy use of hastags, so it’s completely up to you, to control what you see.

Liking “news: 100 people died” is an ambigious kind of information transfer. What does it tell? Does it tell, you liked that people were dying or does it mean you liked that someone is posting this news or does it mean you like all postings of that person because you are in love or stuff?

A simple like is ambigious and thus can harm the flow of communication. Like Goob said, just type some words, maybe only “like” and hit enter.

I know a lot of people are now used to the like button, but I still think we should either throw the like button away or put a complete bar with the buttons “like” “dislike” “excellent” “idiot” “awwww!” under each posting. Then we don’t need to type anything anymore on our keyboards.

Though sometimes I’d have liked to “hate” a post (mostly the “100 people died” kind, or anything about Fb), I think we should get rid of the whole like/dislike paradigm. As others have already posited, it is not clear what is targeted: the user, the sharing of the content, or the content itself. Evaluating the content quickly gets dubious: someone posts a picture of noodles in a bowl, I can like it because ‘yeah, I love noodles!’, because I found it cleverly shot, or the user is a very good friend of mine. I can also dislike it because ‘noodles? bleh!’, picture is bad, or because I think you’re a retard for posting such a thing. Without any additional comment, how do you tell?
Now everybody likes to know which of their post has triggered attention, so I’d rather go with a “of interest” or “thanks for sharing” button, which could be the old pin icon, or any other graphic if more understandable. Btw, it would be good that likings or pinnings made on a reshared post were forwarded to the original poster, but I guess it’s a federation issue?

I once thought about “important” and “unimportant” as the right words. It’s more or less the same as +1 and -1. But I’m not sure if diaspora as a social network should rank comments or postings. Ranking such things is useless, if we don’t use those ranks for displaying the top 20 postings of a user or for a hashtag or stuff.

Oh and yeah, in facebook I realized that girls posting noodles are getting about 300 likes and boys posting something about political problems in greek are getting about 0.5 likes. So I would state that likes are bad for rankings anyway. Rankings work perfectly on stackoverflow.com or other sites but on any other sites not on a special topic or for answering questions I think they are worthless.

As others have mentioned, I see the “Like” button as a “Thank you for sharing” button. In which case, I don’t think it makes sense to have a “Dislike” button. I don’t know if it should be renamed but I personally didn’t like “Pin” (was it added when Pinterest became popular?).