jidanni thinks the “like” icon used to represent all emotions is sub-optimal, suggesting a more “emotion-inclusive” alternative like comedy and tragedy masks. They also mention that users can’t see emotion count details without expressing an emotion themselves and that there’s a limited time to withdraw an emotion before it becomes permanent. ondrej disagrees, suggesting that people wouldn’t react to a post they hate and recommending the reactions plugin to convey emotions better.
Moin and ondrej point out that users can see who has liked a post by clicking on the number of likes. JammyDodger questions the necessity of the feature request, while Heliosurge suggests a possible solution by changing the like icon, which might be possible with the reactions plugin. Firepup650 agrees that the reactions plugin allows for custom icons.
jidanni later identifies the problem as the lack of a mouseover effect on the “like” counter, which should display a message to “click to see details.”
Here it looks like six people liked this item,
when in fact it could be instead six hates.
Same for the heart symbol seen here on meta.
Maybe a Category:Comedy and tragedy mask icon - Wikimedia Commons would be better?
You know, more “emotion-inclusive”.
Also one cannot get emotion count details, without expressing an emotion oneself. And then there is a limited time to withdraw your emotion before it becomes permanent.
Why would you like something you hate? You just wouldn’t react with the post. In my opinion anyway.
To convey emotions better there is the reactions plugin which is enabled on meta.
To add on to what Moin said below. If its just a 
(no reactions) you have to press on the number of likes to show who has liked the post.
I don’t have a problem doing that:
This Contribute > Feature request doesn’t make a whole lot of sense @jidanni? What are you proposing that isn’t already covered by existing UI?
This should do what you want
Though not sure but think the reactions plugin also let’s talk ne now change default like icon
I’m pretty sure it does, IIRC it allows any FA icon to be used.[1]
I would check, but our forum is out atm ↩︎
I found the problem.
In the image that I posted, when I hover my mouse above the “6”, no mouseover is produced.
The relevant element is
<div class="only-like discourse-reactions-counter"
id="discourse-reactions-counter-1026062-right"
data-click-outside="true">
<div class="discourse-reactions-state-panel max-length-1"
style=""></div><span class=
"reactions-counter">1</span></div>
it should have a mouseover saying “click to see details (about those 6)”.