Testing Boosts on Meta

That’s a good definition! :+1:

Although in practice, we run into the issue that Moin mentioned where the posts looks like ‘Yes do this LINK’ or ‘The solution is in QUOTE’ where the characters in LINK and QUOTE are not counted against the minimum character count, which I experience as a problem on its own. Like here.

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Kind of interesting that you felt the need to post a This - which I completely understand. A reply is more emphatic and more noticeable than any reaction mechanism.

(As a counterpoint, in a Discord I frequent there’s someone who often indulges in a single-word affirmation which could easily have been a reaction. The fact I find it annoying to do that says something… perhaps something about me)

Thanks… I think it’s important to note that products for ordinary people are made by developers and designed and overseen by people working in a tech business world, and it’s a danger to bring in things from that technical bubble as if they might be part of a common cultural language. One should be alert to that danger. Most people are not in tech.

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It was a reply - to Canapins post directly above mine. I was trying to point out Joffreys response to him.

This is indeed completely unclear because Discourse hides it when something is a reply to the post directly above it, nor will it allow me to quote that entire post for clarity.

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Just noting that this is adjustable via some settings that are enabled by default:

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Mmm that can be annoying. I often find myself quoting almost all of a post instead.

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All generally true, though Basecamp specifically aims to be the PM tool for ordinary people. Their Boosts add extra friendliness. (They did not already have Likes and Reactions…)

Indeed :smile:

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What an idea! Ordinary people watch television, bake cakes, ride bicycles, join choirs, collect ashtrays… they don’t interact with PM tools!

Edit: I mean this kindly, but I want to send a strong signal to designers and UX people and the decision-making process: the life of a tech person is not a typical life!

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My unsolicited 0.02 is boosts and reactions are redundant. :man_shrugging:t2:

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In the current state, yes, hence:


Toyed with Gemini and let it imagine prototypes of less cluttered boosts:

https://gemini.google.com/share/66c6a9f23341 (open on desktop) — a bit lazy to make a gif for each from my crappy laptop

  1. Show a “XX more boosts” and click to show
  2. Boosts are on a single line, horizontally scrollable/swipable
  3. After X boosts show in their entirety, a list of stacked avatars with their message visible on avatar hover
  4. Stack boosts by reaction type (if tied to reaction emojis), ideally ordered from the most used reaction emoji to the least used

Personally I’m not truly a fan of those propositions, but I think the issue is hard to address.

And probably the team, who possesses real brains of real humans, already has great ideas on how to minimize potential boosts clutters :stuck_out_tongue:

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I’m with this! The fusion of both plugins/components looks great. The current state is really confusing to me.

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Random midnight thought.

Likes and reactions seem useful both for the post’s author and other users. It’s important to know, especially for users newly arrived on a topic, which posts got traction, were emphasized by the community and are worth reading.

Conversely, boosts feel to me more valuable to the post’s author than the community. They are a like a guestbook. They’ll please the author but might be of low value for everyone else. People read guestbook out of curiosity, not to be enlightened.

In this regard, perhaps the boosts visibility should be a different for the post’s author (more boosts visible by default perhaps?) than other users.

Happy to hear opinions on this.

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