Today I newly registered an account on a Discourse-based forum. They allow only three likes per day (probably because of me being a new member).
Every now and then I accidentially click the (still clickable) Like button, only to see the blocking modal dialog box.
Suggestion
My suggestion is to remove this modal dialog box and replace it with something less blocking like e. g.:
An alert tool tip like on Stack Overflow when trying to upvote after the maximum number of votes per day is reached (with auto close after several seconds).
All Like buttons are automatically disabled when I hit the maximum numbers of likes per day, together with a tool tip that tells the reason why being diabled.
I went to bed yesterday and when returning to my computer today, I visited the mentioned Discourse-based forum again.
Happy to be able to like again, I clicked the like button only to see the message (in German):
Du hast die maximale Anzahl an Likes fĂźr heute erreicht. Bitte warte 2 Stunden, bevor du es wieder versuchst.
Manually translated to english this reads:
You have reached the maximum number of likes for today. Please wait 2 hours before trying again.
Now what bothers me is the âtodayâ in the above sentence.
Clearly the forum seems to have a different understanding of what a day is than I do.
Suggestion
I do think it is good to remove the day-alignment of the error texts, since the underlying system does not know about days but seems to only know about relative time spans of hours which seem to always cross âhumanâ day boundaries.
Stack Overflow does this better; IIRC they omit the day phrase alltogether.
How about something like this:
You have reached the maximum number of likes. Please wait 2 hours before trying again.
As an aside: I think limiting user likes to a small number (I believe it applies to all users, since there is no setting specific to new users, is there?) is a stupid thing to for a site owner. You want to encourage not discourage users to like stuff! The default value for max likes per day is 50 and that is fine. But that website seems to have changed that to a much lower value. I wonder why?
If there is, I canât find it. Itâs also not listed as a new user limitation here:
In any case, the likes per post ratio on that forum is >1 so they donât seem to have a problem of users not liking enough. But I still see no reason to reduce the number of likes per user (even and especially new users, if that is really possible). It turns people off and I donât understand their anti-spam argument. In fact, limiting likes like that even does damage because it forces people (like yourself) to create an entire post in order to say âthank youâ or âme tooâ. Preventing that kind of noise is another important function of the button.
But nevermind. My comment was just meant as an aside as it doesnât solve your issue. The only think I could say in relation to your actual question/suggestion is that with the default setting of 50 likes per day, that modal that is annoying you should only appear in extremely rare situations.
Yes, but this only concerns TL2 and up. Not new users aka TL0. So if they are (ab)using these settings to reduce likes for TL0 and TL1 users, then youâll have quite a while to wait for more likes, because then itâs not just about new users but also basic users (TL1)
Only a guess but on one of my localhost forums I had LikerGuy. He did nothing but go through topics and Like every single post until the default maximum of 50 was reached.
Preference settings allow
always
first time, daily
first time
never
Because Like notifications are post-centric (per distinct posts) rather than liker-centric (per distinct liker) âmembersâ were greeted with upwards to around 20 âLikerGuy liked a postâ notifications when they logged in. Some complained.
Approaches to limit this included lowering the daily allowed from the default 50 to 30 which helped somewhat, but affected other âinnocentâ members at the same time.
Tweaking preference settings likewise not only limited âLikerGuy likedâ notifications, but Likes from âinnocentâ members. Ultimately the most effective approach was for members to Mute LikerGuy. Not a problem since he never did anything but Like anyway. But not really a solution for a real world forum.
Iâm wondering if a way to âroll upâ notifications per Liker would be a good idea. In other words, allow members to Like to their hearts content (pun intended) but instead of multiple âLikerGuy likedâ notifications a single notification per liker might solve the potential âLike notification spamâ issue.
Oh well, my imagination failed me on that one. But I guess when it comes to spam/weird behaviour, we just have to assume that if itâs possible, someone will do it.
Hm, not sure. I do want to be informed about which post was liked, and if multiple users like the same post, those will be combined to one notification, not the other way around.
How about changing this, though:
There could either be a user preference setting specifying a max number of like notifications per user. Or you could block notifications from specific users. Wait. That feature already exists. So where is the problem, actually?
Because LikerGuy isnât liking all of Mittineagueâs post. Theyâre liking all of the posts by all of the users. Forcing everybody to mute this one user seems very antisocial, compared to just reminding them that:
Okay, good point. So then: either these user preferences or, to make things simpler, just a global site setting limiting the number of likes a user can give another per day?
I forgot to mention the other solution - using the âdismiss allâ. After reading all of the more important notifications and only the âLikerGuy likedâ remained, dismiss all came in handy.
To get back to real-world concerns, it is a tough call. Giving Likes is a good thing and should not be discouraged. But giving too many might be more a negative thing, and what constitutes âtoo manyâ is subjective. How many are too many?
button.
