A discussion on adding a “like” button or link for email notifications is underway. downey suggests including a link or button to enable users to “like” a post from their email client, avoiding the 20-character minimum reply limit.
codinghorror requests a mockup, which downey provides. codinghorror proposes making email replies under a certain character limit implicit likes, but downey points out potential issues with negative replies.
DeanMarkTaylor references a related feature request and downey suggests including instructions in the email footer to reply with the word “like” or click a link. However, DeanMarkTaylor prefers a simpler reply process, where users can type “like” or “+1” and send.
riking proposes a mailto link solution, which would use the reply key and post number to track the like action. watchmanmonitor thinks this would make the discourse/email list more like a web-forum.
On investigating some of our email-based replies that are below the default 20-character threshold, many of them are for short responses of affirmation, e.g. “sounds fine to me”, etc.
As I understand it, the character limit is designed to avoid just those type of responses in topics. One way to avoid user anger at the character limitation when they use email would be to include a link or button that would enable people to “like” the post for which they’re being notified.
That way, the user doesn’t have to struggle come up with some type of reply over 20 character minimum, and can voice their approval in 1 a single from their email client.
This could be troublesome if the reply is “rubbish!” or something like that.
The suggestion from @DeanMarkTaylor would be probably be OK too, as long as there were instructions to do so, perhaps in the footer. Or the footer could be something like:
To like this post, reply with the single word “like” or click here.
