Suppressing the word "likes" on posts

[tophee (Christoph)]

@ssvenn

but maybe the tooltips could include some extra text explaining the button actions better.

“x persons like this, click to show”

“this is your own post, click to show who liked it”

Or how about if the button and the like count would be kept separate? For example, the word “likes” could be inserted after the like count and there would not be any button on your own post…

[codinghorror (Jeff Atwood)]

I don’t find it confusing because it already works that way on Twitter. I think I’d wait to hear from a few more folks before rushing ahead with a sample size of one.

[tgxworld (Alan Tan)]

On Twitter, clicking on the heart will always result in the “heart this post” action though. I actually agree with @erlend_sh here that having the following is confusing.

@erlend_sh

two identical click targets actually doing different things.

[mcwumbly (Dave McClure)]

I’m still a fan of this earlier suggestion. Do folks see any problems with that idea?

[codinghorror (Jeff Atwood)]

We don’t take action on single internal reports, though. I need to hear this from multiple different people on multiple sites.

[tobiaseigen]

You can add my vote - I think it’s confusing for the UI to look the same but work differently depending on who write the post. I wrote about this a few days ago and made a suggestion:

@tobiaseigen

There is an issue with it when looking at my own posts. It feels like a broken feature because I can’t select it to like my own post. […] And then when people start liking it, display the heart in an obviously different color (light shade of blue?) to indicate the difference between a heart you can click on and one you cannot? The heart is already displayed red when you yourself liked posts by others.

Just checked on twitter, and there it seems they dealt with this issue by simply allowing people to like their own tweets. So if that’s the UI we are following, maybe we should start allowing users to like their own posts? Or at least to make it look like it but not count it, in some clever way?

I’ll ask about it in my community and see if anyone else is confused by this. Nobody has been complaining, truth be told.

[riking (Kane York)]

@tobiaseigen

Just checked on twitter, and there it seems they dealt with this issue by simply allowing people to like their own tweets. So if that’s the UI we are following, maybe we should start allowing users to like their own posts? Or at least to make it look like it but not count it, in some clever way?

Also note that the count on the button is actually still part of the action click target. The click for “view (partial) list of people” is only shown after you expand the Tweet, and it’s on a repetition of the count with words.

re: liking your own posts, it’s considered a social faux pas - e.g. “look at this dork, liking their own posts [because nobody else will]”

[sam (Sam Saffron)]

I think clicking … expanding likers is something we should do for sure, it is also a way easier click target than hitting 1 on the left on mobile

I see no downsides to adding this

[codinghorror (Jeff Atwood)]

Sure agreed expand on ellipsis has no downsides

[techAPJ (Arpit Jalan)]

@mcwumbly

expand the likers immediately when you click ...

Done in

UX: show users who liked the post when expanding post actions

[tophee (Christoph)]

Could the trust level from which the word “likes” is removed be a site-setting?

[codinghorror (Jeff Atwood)]

This is not subject to trust level.

[tophee (Christoph)]

Let me rephrase then: could this UI change be made a site setting?

[codinghorror (Jeff Atwood)]

It is not planned, no.

[Stephen]

Ok, so it took me a little while to figure out, but if you want to see who has liked a post without yourself liking it you click on the number, rather than the heart?

Having them both encapsulated in the same rectangle on-hover makes them appear tied to a single action, no?

[joffreyjaffeux]

Yes but what are the solutions? Making 2 rectangles, force it to have space between, making it unclear that one is correlated to the other.

So in one case we have no links between two elements, in the other case we have a clear link between the two elements, but it’s not very clear that you can achieve two different actions.

But in the end you find it, and most people would find it as there’s the hover difference.

[Stephen]

Aside from suggesting that they appear on hover, which only fixes it for one class of device and I’m by no means keen on.

This has arisen because two UI elements which had separate purposes have been merged. Being forced to like a post just to see who else liked it isn’t behavior we see elsewhere, if we’re taking cues from those platforms we need to do likewise here, right?

On Facebook, which has one of the more well-developed like systems they’re separate, and includes the ability to remove likes given in error. Twitter separates the act of liking from the list too, and also allows a like to be removed.

Here on Discourse you can no longer see who liked a post or response without liking it yourself unless you know that they’re actually separate, and can’t remove the like if it was given in error. The interface no longer provides those cues.

Have we proven that a single UI element can’t achieve both, and lost functionality in the process?

[sam (Sam Saffron)]

The best thing to do here is discuss stuff with pictures… (this is a pretty non-ideal example of how to improve cause maybe … should be closer to reply)

I think there are spacing tricks we can do that will maintain separate buttons yet keep “number” tied to “like”.

@awesomerobot did a great job with his mobile proposal here which I hope we implement.

[codinghorror (Jeff Atwood)]

I think it is fine as is for now. There is a fair bir of knee jerking going on here based on the opinion of one person, in isolation. We need more people to see the feature so we can aggregate feedback across multiple people on multiple sites.

[codinghorror (Jeff Atwood)]

@steve_pd

This has arisen because two UI elements which had separate purposes have been merged. Being forced to like a post just to see who else liked it isn’t behavior we see elsewhere, if we’re taking cues from those platforms we need to do likewise here, right?

Literally none of what you wrote is correct. You can undo likes within a fixed time interval and have been able to since Discourse was launched in 2013. They are not merged; press the glyph to initiate or undo the action, press the number (or the post action expand ellipsis) to expand the list of who liked the post. Same as it ever was, except the target got smaller — which is why if you read any of the posts above yours, you would know that we added ellipsis as an expand action because of that.