I think all reactions should be counted equally. Just because those negative ones are used as sign of empathy quite often.
And the big question is are negative reactions sign of receiver’s or giver’s negativity?
Because we don’t know and there is no way to understand context automatically, we must take way of social media: action is action is action.
On the upside, the system of requiring the receipt of 20 likes, and the giving of 30 likes during the last 100 days for Trust Level 3 – Regular is simple, transparent, and avoids the ambiguity of some of the reactions. A downside is that it ignores those reactions, which constitute data that could reflect upon the quality of the concerned posts.
Would it be possible, and not overly cumbersome, for someone to quantify the number of likes and the number of reactions that have been applied on this forum since the time that reactions have become available as an option? If this can be done, it might help us judge whether ignoring reactions for the purpose of awarding trust levels is a significant issue.
There is the possibility of using AI to apply sentiment analysis to replies to posts in cases where the person who replied has also invoked a reaction that might otherwise be seen as ambiguous. But my sense is that this might entail a large amount of work that delivers only a small amount of benefit. In addition, sentiment analysis inevitably would incorporate some systematic cultural bias into the process of awarding trust levels. This is also true of assigning numerical values to reactions.
So, the above leaves me inclined to wait for itemized statistics on the use of reactions before my forming an opinion. That brings us back to the issue of the discussion, Enhance About page website statistics. Implementing the proposed feature could help us here.
There is another route too: we don’t count reactions/likes toward trustlevel. I choosed that way — but sure, my situation is different what perhaps most of the world is living in (with? Damn those prepositions are confusing).
I don’t have spam problem. My forum is low traffic. So I can give TL1 right away. I don’t need higher than TL2 because it is an incentive, hiding ads, and one gets it via creating content, not spreading smileys. And higher trustlevels — well, moderation is not users’ job.
I know. That is not reality for all and there is forums where reactions are needed to prove ability to behave.
But my vague point is thay every admin should think a bit deeper what is actually needed and what is just… hype. And I’m not totally sure if counting reactions and/or likes proves anything. It is pure situation easy given quantity goes over quality.
And yet I would like to see reactions counted as likes. Just because if a forum uses likes as a metric for trustlevel, and users are using reactions instead of likes, and that’s why users may loose earned trustlevel, what signal we are giving then?
So, I see only two options:
This all seems too complex. Why not merely have the thumbs up and down emojis demonstrate support or lack thereof respectively, and all other reactions be cosmetic? That would allow usage of all emojis to be implemented immediately without any consideration of its effect upon this issue, and provide simpler UX to the users.
Because it breaks metrics of trustlevel. No other reasons.
In my opinion it is not too easy to gain TL3. At least in our community, which is not as crowded as maybe here (where it looks like the default values are not in use).
Anyway, I read through the trust level concept and also thought about the default values there. And I think, they make sense for communities like the one I am running Discourse for. But they do not match anymore when reactions are active. So admins would need to check the percentage of likes and reactions and adjust the numbers. And readjust after some time and checking again the percentage. Also readjustment is needed when adding more reactions and so on. And, at the moment, SQL queries are needed, which leads to Enhance About page website statistics again. 
So, I still cannot wait for having the reactions having their part in the trust level system and other parts of Discourse, where likes play a role. Optional for sure, but this is just a setting to turn on or leave it off and the traditional way. Also there should be some way to treat negative reactions, which I personally would keep as simple as possible (like flagging a reaction as negative and to choose if negative reactions are counted or not) - every community is a bit different.
Well, the trust level concept and also likes being a part of it was one of the main reasons for us to migrate to Discourse. So no, this would be the least I want. But as mentioned, every community is different and it is good to keep reactions out of it. 
Fundamentally mixing likes (with impact in other parts of the site) and reactions (entirely cosmetic) has been confusing for users, in my experience. We added reactions because people wanted to show a variety of emotions. A big one is simply demonstrating care. So we have the 
reaction to demonstrate the reader agrees with the author about a sad situation. It’s not about expressing displeasure about the author or the quality of their writing. It’s the same instinct as pressing or 
, but with a different nuance based on the message.
If I were designing the system I’d either:
The current system gives users the choice of either giving a bland/default response (thus helping them gain trust level) or the appropriate response (that’s just cosmetic). That’s assuming people even understand the difference (my users generally don’t). The current situation is far from ideal, but adding a downvote on the same interface will make things worse, in my opinion.
I believe that this is the sole viable option to prevent a system like Facebook’s whereby certain reactions are contextually awarded to demonstrate negative reaction to the post, yet boost it algorithmically.
If modifying the GUI to demonstrate the difference between cosmetic and functional reactions were however implausible infeasible, I would propose that cosmetic reactions be deprecated. However, demonstrating a difference between them is immediately feasible, and appears to solve this problem. I believe that it should at least be temporarily implemented until and/or unless a more complex but superior solution is implemented.
I doubt that any other solution is superior, however - any UX for it would be needlessly complex.
Note, here, that the statistics provided indicate that the total count of all reactions, excluding likes, was about 7.2% of the total count of the likes plus the count of all reactions. So including reactions as likes without any weighting, for the purpose of awarding trust levels, would have a minor impact. Unfortunately, it would complicate the process and make it more opaque. Accordingly, I would lean somewhat against it.
Well, you would need couple curves to show how using of reactions is growing. And is using likes coming down. Reactions here is relaticely new and users knows how TL-system works and like it.
So… could we have here a bit high bias 
If the trend continues, an adjustment to the current system might be needed. The appropriate threshold is admittedly a matter of judgement, so my leaning against it is only a small lean.
I just checked in our community for the ongoing month of November: The quota here is 94 likes vs 68 reactions. So that makes 42% reactions vs 58% likes. None of the reactions were negative (cry or angry). Also the other months show that negative reactions are barely used (8 for the total year 2023). November is a “normal” month, but I can also come up with the 2023 numbers if needed.
That’s the reason why I am not satisfied with not including the reactions into the trust level system or handling completly seperate to likes.
Aha, so that hypothetical trend has already materialized, at least within some venues. 42% is a significant plurality. Accordingly, within your community, and perhaps in general, an adjustment to the current system of awarding trust levels does seem merited.
That is interesting. Presumably, you are referring to the Sidemount-Forum. Within a community such as that, which engages in exploration via diving, reactions to reports of spectacular marine and aquatic creatures and other discoveries are to be expected. Those reactions are likely to be highly positive, and it is understandable why you would want them to count. Negative reactions would be uncommon, except perhaps for occasional fright.
On the other hand, a different forum dealing with politics or other controversial topics might experience a significance of negative reactions, with some directed against particular opinions expressed, and with other negative reactions offered in agreement with a post, perhaps that some political figure has committed a misdeed (all too commonly ).
With the recognition that the meanings of particular reactions may vary between communities, it might be a good idea to enable the fine details of formulae for computing trust levels to be configurable.
Yes, correct, I am talking about the Sidemount-Forum. And I also think that this community is different to many other which also are different to others. Perfectly normal. Even if divers in our forum can disagree a lot (e.g. about diving equipment, the way to use it and so on), it seems not to be very common to use negative reactions. I would think, that this would not be the case in a forum about politics, yes.
But that how we come back to a suggestion, which seems be pretty simple and which I suggested, too. And which makes a lot more sense for many communities than just ignoring reactions.
That’s it.
/EDIT: I did not mention the most important part: Without counting reactions it is worse for many forums than counting and not be 100% accurate or well thought out. On the other side, reactions bring so much more into many communities, so it does not make sense to disable reactions to have 100% accurate like counters. I hope I was able to explain what my thoughts are about this.
If the user’s content receives negative reactions, then such content is not liked by the community or it is useless. If it is impossible to block a user with bad content, since he has not violated the Rules, then you need to influence the user or his content.
With the help of reactions, community members will be able to manage content and lower or increase user points depending on its value. And that’s right 
Not in my experience. When people use 
or 
, they could be responding to the author of the post. But more commonly, they are responding to the content of the post.
For instance, if I write that my neighbor didn’t clean up their dog’s 
in my front yard, it doesn’t make a lot of sense to use or in response. Nobody likes where it doesn’t belong! So I’d expect or reactions to be directed at the neighbor in the post, not at the post itself. 
or would be even better, of course. Not sure how common those emojis are as reactions, though.
Then we will need to arrange for a reaction of to be counted against the neighbor’s trust level.
In all seriousness, your point is well taken that with negative reactions …
I suspect different emojis are used in a variety of different ways in different forums. For example, in my forum…“my weather logging software has corrupted all of my data” might get or “my weather station has broken and the supplier refuses to fix it” could get as a response. These are directed at the post content rather than the author. They are indicators of empathy with the author rather than negativity.
TBH I think there’s a lot of deep and meaningful discussion about emojis when most users probably click them without any great thought like that being expressed here.
One example more from live topic to demonstrate how difficult, even waste of time, classification of positive and negative reactions is.
Eastern border of Finland against Russia is now totally closed. Why is not important here, but finns living near the border bought very much cheapeare gas from Russian. And they aren’t too happy now.
Our costs of gas is skyrocketing now
That comment got several times. One meaning is kind of positive and sign of empathy: damn, you have to pay much more now. One is pure negative: buhuu, do you have to pay now same price as we others have paid all the time.
But it got and it normally would counted as a positive reaction. Except it has really negative meaning in this context: try to find some strenght for living, you poor bas…
Well, we don’t count reactions, just positive I give one guess if it is actually positive in this context…
My point is totally same than earlier. We don’t know feelings and purpose behind given reaction, ever. And Discourse tries to be a global app, but we have to be realistic: USA and Canada sees and reads things differently, there is no such thing as generic Europa, Africa or Asia, chinese are really good to develop different meanings, central or southern Americas are totally different ball game.
We can`t have some generic way to classify reactions (that quite often is same thing than north american way… shall we talk about tits (and I’m talking about birds, what did you think) versus… well, something. And because even niches and genres between forums varietes hugely we can do those rules geographically either.
So, we have four real world options:
For me personally all solutions are just fine. As long as I can use value zero with likes when adjusting demands of trustlevel