Reactions count as likes?

Yes, it is indeed a good idea. Let’s look at Understanding Discourse Trust Levels. Among the credentials for being admitted to and for maintaining membership in Trust Level 3 – Regular is this:

  • Must have received 20 likes, and given 30 likes.*

… that is within the past 100 days.

Receiving likes does reflect well on the recipient. Granting 30 likes during the prescribed period could also reasonably be considered to constitute constructive engagement in the community, but that might be a bit tricky if the grantor covets that gold-level Crazy in Love badge. On the other hand, receiving negative reactions, if counted, could point toward holding down that user’s trust level.

However, what can reliably be regarded as a negative reaction? For example, I personally would be quite reluctant to aim an angry reaction at another user. If I were, hypothetically, to use such a reaction, it would likely be to express agreement with the author of a post that a situation described in that post is a vexing one, for example one where the user identified rampant misuse of a large language model (LLM) to generate posts on behalf of a user, so that the user may quickly gain credentials. In that context, the angry reaction would rightly be considered a positive one, appreciative of the author’s having identified a problem that needs attention. Some users other than myself might use negative reactions differently. Due to that ambiguity, I am currently inclined to avoid using them entirely.

Note the ongoing discussion Enhance About page website statistics. Perhaps we can consider how we can enhance the statistics feature that is the subject of that discussion in order to offer convenient access to information that might help us with the issue of this discussion.

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