In a discussion on encouraging lurkers to give likes in a login-restricted Discourse community, th21 notes that many users read long posts but rarely like them, despite reminders during sign-up and banners. krisfreedain suggests adding a simple call-to-action at the end of posts, such as “Did you find this article helpful? Let us know by clicking ‘Like’ after reading,” and explaining that likes help shape future content. cocococosti recommends leveraging badges—like the default ‘Higher Love’ and ‘Gives Back’—and creating custom badges with visible titles and public display. They also propose identifying top likers via periodic queries, assigning them to a custom group, and giving them flair (e.g., a badge icon on avatars) for public recognition. JimPas emphasizes the psychological value of likes: they acknowledge contributors and prevent the feeling of “talking to a wall.” He shares success from encouraging a user to add personal commentary with links and engage with replies, which led to increased likes and discussions. While some users still forget to like after replying, this behavior is becoming rarer. The consensus leans toward combining visible recognition, clear prompts, and community culture to foster appreciation through likes.
Our community has login restricted content so user need to register in order to view them, but as I see in the data explorer using this query.
A lot of users read some posts over 15 mins (long atricle) but doesn’t give a like, and a large percent of users read most posts in the community but left no likes.
I try to notice them that they can give likes during sign up process and add fixed banner to encourage them to make response to topics they like, but doesn’t seem like to work.
One simple way is to simply remind them at the end of the post.
“Did you find this article helpful? Let us know by clicking ‘Like’ after reading.”
you could also add in wording to let them know that this simple measurement is used to continue to develop helpful content that will be useful for the community.
You could make sure they are awarded for giving likes by awarding badges. There are a few default badges related to likes, for example the ‘Higher Love’ and the ‘Gives Back’ badges. You could go a step further and create custom badges. Make sure to enable the Allow badge to be used as a title and Show badge on the public badges page settings, to make the badges are more visible.
Another thing you could do to encourage liking, is run a query periodically to get the users that gave the most amount of likes and add them to a custom group. You could then configure a flair to this group, so they have recognition accross your forum as “likers”.
To me, giving a like to someone’s post let’s them know that what they wrote has at the least been acknowledged. Imagine a group of people talking and one person says something no one replies, makes any remark, or even smiles. For that person a feeling of “why even bother to say anything” can slowly creep in. For them it would be the equivalent to “talking to a wall” - saying something and getting silence in return.
I’ve had a user who, for a while, did nothing but post links to articles in various topics without making at least a comment about how he/she felt about it. It wasn’t until I mentioned that posting the links is fine, but engagement was sorely absent - no discussions - unless the user started off with a remark, posted the link, and replied to others when they responded to that user’s comment. I also mentioned liking others posts using what I posted in my first paragraph above. Finally, a back-and-forth discussion ensued… and the likes flowed! We still have a couple of users who read a post, reply and forget to like the post. But that happening less and less often.
We still have a couple of users who read a post, reply and forget to like the post. But that happening less and less often. 