That’s a good definition! 
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.
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.
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.
Mmm that can be annoying. I often find myself quoting almost all of a post instead.
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…)
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!
My unsolicited 0.02 is boosts and reactions are redundant. 
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
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 
I’m with this! The fusion of both plugins/components looks great. The current state is really confusing to me.
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.
I like that idea, same as how liking a reel on instagram works.
So, direction would be same than in social media — hunting reactions from other users and admin/owner side hopes that would be addictive and/or rewarding enough to engage people enough 
Too general perhaps, but I’m trying to figure out the purpose for this kind (moral) boosts. But I admit this might be pure cultural question. I’m from the world were gamification, badges etc. are effective way to push users away. And that means I’m not target audience in this topic and other forums may need this kind feature badly.
I might be very wrong too and seeing this purely thru social media colored glasses. Perhaps this kind… lite or light actions are what my slow forum desperate needs. And then there should be, again from my point of view, better visibility to give boosts. I have users who are complaining reply button(s) are too well hidden. They don’t react to icons, because they are used too see a text box. That is one reason why I like this idea:
How does it work? I don’t use insta.
Quite like you described
Discourse doesn’t allow downvotes by design / philosophy. You can like but not don’t like.
For this reason, reactions are treated as likes with the exception of “neutral” reactions admins can choose but I suppose most communities don’t or rarely use them.
Boosts allow negative comments and negative emojis which seems a bit antithetical to discourse’s philosophy.
If boosts are tied to reactions, it might make people less inclined to “negative boost” (especially if the text field doesn’t allow emoji…? ).
Another layer in the communication hierarchy – reply, reaction, like – okay, why not. Community managers can decide for themselves whether to use it.
However, I probably wouldn’t enable it for our community given the current presentation, as it introduces quite a bit of visual noise and ultimately runs counter to the “keep it simple” principle.
Hear me out, what about reactions to boosts! Half kidding, half serious haha.
For the latter, if someone captures my thoughts with a boost, I would just want to like theirs instead of having a duplicate boost.
