Discourse Reactions

[Discourse]

	Summary	Discourse Reactions allows users to React to a post from a choice of emojis, rather than only the Like heart. The available emoji selection can be set from the admin settings.
	Repository Link	https://github.com/discourse/discourse-reactions
	Install Guide	How to install plugins in Discourse

As this is an official plugin maintained by the Discourse team, support, bug, ux, and feature requests can be made in the respective categories here on Meta, and tagged with the appropriate plugin tag. Click on a link below to get one started.

 Support  Bug  UX  Feature

Bored of likes in discourse? Here’s something you will definitely love.

Overview

Discourse-reactions is a plugin that allows user to add their reactions to the post. This plugin can engage more audiences to the post. Users who may not have previously wanted to Like your content are now able to send more specific signals about how your content makes them feel. Users who may not have wanted to use their phones to post can now use them to “react” much easier.

Reactions can be different on each website as we have an amazing feature where site admin can set their list of emojis which can be used as reactions.

To customize the reactions use the site setting discourse_reactions_enabled_reactions and define emojis you want as reactions separated by | eg: open_mouth|cry|angry

This plugin will work as an add-on to the likes feature, anytime you want to remove the plugin, all likes will be preserved.

Configure

You can configure these Site Settings:

• discourse_reactions_enabled To enable the plugin
• discourse_reactions_enabled_reactions To define the list of enabled reactions, any emoji is allowed here. default: laughing|open_mouth|cry|angry|thumbsup|thumbsdown
• discourse_reactions_like_icon To replace the like icon.
• discourse_reactions_reaction_for_like To define the name of like reaction.

Creating a reaction

The reaction can be created either by clicking the like icon OR by hovering and selecting reaction from the reaction picker.

Note:

• In Mobile to open the reaction-panel long press on like icon.

See who reacted?

On the left side of the post, there will be a list of reactions, by clicking on it, there will be a modal displayed with the list of reactions.

If there are only likes in the post, a list of reactions will not be available but there will be a like-count besides the like button. clicking on it will display the same modal.

Don’t want to see this whole modal? Just hover on the reaction-emoji in the list to see the recently reacted users (Available Only on the desktop site).

See Your reactions?

In the user page activity, there is an extra Reactions tab where you will find all reactions you made.

See who reacted to your post?

In the user page notifications, there is an extra Reactions tab where you will find all reactions made to your posts.

Badge

First Reaction Badge is granted to the user when they make their first reaction to a post.

Contributors

@Ahmed_Gagan

@joffreyjaffeux
@kris.kotlarek
@Roman_Rizzi

Special Thanks

Special thanks to @joffreyjaffeux for being such a nice mentor and for being super helpful in everything and @team for helping us to make the plugin works perfect by finding bugs as much as possible.

Last edited by @JammyDodger 2024-06-18T14:22:05Z

Check document

Perform check on document:

[hazenbiz (Hazen Ellwood)]

about.json error while trying to install

[Moin]

This is a plugin. You cannot install plugins like themes and theme components.

@Discourse

	Install Guide	How to install plugins in Discourse

[haydenjames]

Is this compatible with the Gamification plugin?

[NateDhaliwal]

Of course. Meta has both, and they work fine. Are they not in your forum?

[Lilly]

Hi @haydenjames - i know your forum isn’t using either of these, but yes they are compatible. here is some info about reaction as likes, which affects gamification scoring too.

Changes to which reactions are counted as likes

Announcement I would like to announce that we are going to start rolling out the discourse_reactions_like_sync_enabled setting to all of our hosted sites, setting it to true, and setting it to default true for new sites. What this means is that historical reactions will have a Like record created for them. On some sites that haven’t used reactions this may be a very small amount, on other sites this may be to the tune of tens of thousands of records. This will influence the Top and Ho…

[ddventures (Dexter)]

For some odd reason, I have the plugin Discourse Reactions installed and enabled but my posts don’t seem to be showing the heart.

Is there another option to enable it?

[NateDhaliwal]

What happens if you inspect the page there? Perhaps the heart element is there, just hidden or a problem with Font Awesome?

[Firepup650 (Firepup Sixfifty)]

You won’t see the like icon on your own posts, until someone else reacts to them.

[Shauny (Shaun Robinson)]

Is it possible to disable reactions for certain people?

We have a rather toxic user who just puts the “angry” emoji on loads of posts. We have asked him to stop but he hasn’t responded. My choices currently are to suspend him or just leave him.

I’d much rather disable reactions, maybe aside from the Heart, for him only. But there isn’t an option for that.

[NateDhaliwal]

What if you removed the angry emoji? In my opinion, that emoji doesn’t provide a very positive environment.
Sorry if this sounds rude, I don’t mean it as such.

[Shauny (Shaun Robinson)]

This has been considered, although we generally have a very friendly community and the “angry” emoji is used in response to news or events that make us angry, not posts that make us angry. Or it’s also used in games that we play, if someone makes a ‘move’ that makes someone else ‘angry’, it’s just a fun game.

But yes as I said we have considered this, but would like to see if we can disable reactions first.

[tobiaseigen]

Are you able to talk to the person about it? I think this could best be handled through moderator action. You can warn the person and eventually ban them if they don’t comply.

[Shauny (Shaun Robinson)]

We have sent them 3 messages and they are not responding to any of them. Today they logged in again and put an angry emoji on at least 30 posts!

[Jagster (Jakke Lehtonen)]

I’m curious…

• do they have legit reason to use angry face?
• is theirs content otherwise similar than other content in that forum?
• are other users fine with that content?

If the answer is yes to all of those point then you should just let it be. But if it is no then you should kick them out and go back to normal life.

And if negative emotions are against the culture of that forum, you should disable all of such emojies. Because after that they move to use verbal form and kicking them out would be even easier.

It is just matter of one question: are those posts violating mental environment of community. If not where is the real problem? If yes, do some christmas cleaning

So, it is matter of moderation, not tuning up the plugin.

[NateDhaliwal]

Perhaps send them a warning. That could be a reality check for them for them to reflect. If they persist or ignore, send 1 more warning. If they do it again, perhaps suspend them temporarily.

[Shauny (Shaun Robinson)]

We did already send a warning. No response, they removed themselves from the message.

I sent another, final, warning today.

It’s a shame because they have posted a few times and I don’t like to suspend people but I’d like the option to remove their ability to post reactions.

[tobiaseigen]

In the last year, we have moved to a new way to give privileges to people, by group. Maybe an answer here could be to change the discourse reactions enabled setting to e.g. discourse reactions allowed groups setting. That way you could lock this user to trust level 0 and allow reactions to trust level 1, for instance. Or create another group and manually put people in it who are allwed to use reactions.

If many more people express a need for this, we could consider making this change.

But honestly if this person is not listening to you then you need to use your moderator tools to let them know who’s in charge. That is nearly always the way, rather than trying to find a solution in the software.

[Heliosurge (Dan DeMontmorency)]

There is a Theme component to hide likes from new users as I recall.

Hide Likes For New Users

This is a very simple theme component that gives you the ability to hide the “like” functionality from new (TL0) users. While not 100% foolproof against an extremely determined troll, it will prevent the “like” elements from ever loading into the DOM while active. The hope is that it can act as an additional obstacle to trolls attempting to abuse likes. I also included the option to hide likes from anons in case that’s helpful for any community. Before: [before] After: [after] Installatio…

You can also use some CSS and add the problem user to a group.

@Canapin

You can hide the like button with CSS, but that won’t prevent users from liking posts (a plugin would be required to ensure that), if they figure out how to un-hide the button for example.

I suppose the easiest way would be using CSS Classes for Current User’s Groups which adds the current user groups to the body classes, then use CSS such as:

body.category-your-category-slug:not(.group-group_name) {
    button.like {
        display: none;
    }
}

Let me know if you have trouble understanding