The discussion is about finding alternatives to for promoting or supporting posts, especially when the content is sad or distressing. icaria36 suggests a as a more emotionally neutral option. tshenry recommends a plugin called “Retort” and shares a relevant topic on the Discourse meta forum. riking offers a mental reframing of the “like” button, interpreting it as “thank you for sharing” rather than “I like what this post is talking about.” alefattorini links to a dedicated topic on another forum, exploring the idea of a “tophat” symbol for supportive interactions.
Liking a first post is a good way to support or promote a topic. Using the paradigm of - Like works pretty well in a forum like this one, mainly dedicated to “positive” topics.
However, today I found myself unable to “Like” a topic in our website, even if I really wanted to promote it and increase its potential visibility. The problem was that the topic featured very sad news. I feared that “liking” the post could be interpreted as me supporting a massacre.
There is no lack of sad news, and some of them will be featured in sites with a Discourse forum. I wonder whether anyone has implemented or thought about implementing an alternative paradigm. For instance, a would be more emotionally neutral but still supportive and clear.
It must be acknowledged that Twitter gets away with hearts as well, and there is no lack of sad news being promoted by users there. Facebook started with the famous “Like” only, but they addressed this problem some years ago by adding an array of emoticons, including sadness and anger.
My solution to that has been to recast the “like” in my mind from “I like what this post is talking about” to “Thank you for sharing this, [even though it’s upsetting]”.
- Like works pretty well in a forum like this one, mainly dedicated to “positive” topics.
would be more emotionally neutral but still supportive and clear.
“Like” only, but they addressed this problem some years ago by adding an array of emoticons, including sadness and anger.