To drive more users to register/login, it would be great if the heart icon was shown on each post, even if the user hasn’t initiated a session. This is similar to the way Twitter works. They don’t hide the ability to favorite a message if you’re logged in. Instead, they have it as an additional call-to-action to encourage/prompt users to login.
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I’ve been sucked in to various sites like this… great idea.
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On a similar note, I just realized how we don’t show any prompt for New Topic unless users are logged in. Prompting users to create content should be an important prompt to onboarding new content creators to the community.
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We don’t necessarily want to incentivize new topic creation by anon users, replies and likes are more defensible.
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I see your point, but wouldn’t that be nice to let community admins determine what makes sense for their community? I think it could make a difference on where a community is in it’s life cycle, or who it’s target users are.
A newer community may need help to drive additional engagement. Or in a very established community, sometimes the same users writing all the time can get stagnant, and the push for new topics can help rejuvenate things.
Also, less Web savvy users may need a little action design to get them to post / signup.
BTW, when thinking about taking action on the heart icon for new users, would be interesting to think about what that means about email confirmation. Can I start liking topics during my first logged-in session before going to my email to activate my membership?
Oh, this may be slightly off topic, but somewhat relevant to the discussion. If I login with Facebook, am I still required to confirm my email? AFAIK, if you haven’t already confirmed your email with FB, then you won’t be able to login to other sites.
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With Facebook, Google, and Github login, if the site reports that they have confirmed your email address, Discourse will trust that evaluation.
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@codinghorror any chance this could be a candidate for 1.5 or 1.6?
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I was wondering if the heart icon for logged out users might make it onto the roadmap?
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BREAKING NEWS
We now show heart for logged out users 
(Personally I would like to also show reply, but hey this is a great start)
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