We’re testing out a new feature on Meta — boosts! Boosts offer another way for members to react to each other’s posts, that fall somewhere between a simple reaction (, , etc.) and a full-blown reply.
How do I boost?
The boost button as a rocket icon, which you can select or hover over to add to a post. You can add one boost per post, and each boost allows up to 16 characters (including text and emoji).
How does flagging boosts work? I accidentally clicked on the flag icon (on short boosts those are quite close to the avatar) and got this, where the flag button was disabled
I don’t recognize this word, I assume boosts aren’t translated already
Those are already rare as posts must have a minimum of X characters. The limit exists precisely to avoid this kind of replies. Discourse made things well in this respect, tho the default 20 characters is too high to my taste (I decreased it on all my forums).
I remember “Quip” was also proposed amongst others suggestions. I liked this one for how the word sounds, but it was apparently not neutral enough. Indeed, names are hard to choose, and it’s also difficult to change them later.
Yes, but with more than 15 characters.
Pretty much anything under 15 characters to me would belong to a like or a reaction.
Something more in the range of ~30 characters, perhaps, would fill the gap between a like and a small message we’d like to add without writing it in a full-featured post.
It’s just my feeling after briefly testing this single topic, so it’ll probably change over time.
And how boosts are used will probably differ a lot within different categories or forums.
If the intent is to allow users to emphasize their reaction with one or two words, then it does the job. If the intent is to allow users to add a bit more information or subtlety as a quick note, then 15 chars is probably too short.
Also, what about the possibility of allowing a boost only after liking or reacting?
Anyway, very happy to see this feature live
It’s one of those many, small features that help Discourse stand out over contenders.
i seriously don’t understand the point of this feature if we have reactions already. what am i missing here? what is the benefit of a boost vs like or reaction?
is it akin to a mastodon boost and will it work with activity pub?
I’m teetering back and forth on whether this would be useful or not.
On one hand I understand it helps limit contain a reply like I would’ve done to yours, which would’ve just been “unfortunately I agree”… Albiet the character limit hindered my full response. The way I see it is it is like a descriptive reaction that doesn’t clutter the topic. For example if I just hearted/liked your reply you have to somewhat assume an interpretation (I realize the solution may just be add more reaction options, though).
One benefit that I could see it it’s another rung in the engagement ladder for people to interact more. My community is very introverted and reluctant to reply, so perhaps this reply-lite may entice them more.
The idea is obviously not to have everything at once. Mid/Long term we will most likely unify boosts/reactions/likes so a community can decide to pick one of them depending on their requirements/size/kind/…
I do agree that we should probably allow communities to have more flexibility on the max length.
I like this but think it should be combined with Reactions, just let people add text to their reactions. Having another button is confusing, and the name is very confusing.
who is going to see the text, and when will they see it? is a person expected to keep revisiting every reply in a topic to see if any new boosts have turned up?
what’s the chance of toxic content appearing in boosts? who will see, who will police?
what’s the chance of a side-conversation happening within boosts?
I very much hope this is optional: it doesn’t seem attractive to me for my forums.
(And if it doesn’t chance the order or promotion of a reply, I think boost is a poor name. Quip seems better, but that’s possibly not a widely enough understood word.)
I imagine the name is meant to be sort of like “morale boost” you’re “gassing someone up” as it goes — this is essentially 1:1 with the basecamp flavor of reactions.
Yes, will 100% be optional
It likely varies significantly by site — there are cases where sites reduce the minimum post length which tends to create a situation where a lot of people end up replying with “cool” “love it” or whatever. Doing that with boosts allows for this sort of noise while occupying a little less of the discussion feed.
nope
It doesn’t bump the discussion, just sends the boosted user a notification that contains the boost content
just as likely as any other text input — if you click a boost it reveals a flag icon (maybe making this hover on desktop makes it more discoverable?), so it can be flagged and addressed like moderators like posts
That’s an aspect I have thought about, too. Since no one else is notified, someone with bad intentions can be quite sure the user themselves will read the message, while a public reply bumping the topic might be flagged by someone else.
I haven’t tested how muting a user interacts with boosts. If a user has already muted another user, it could either result in an unwanted notification because of the boost by the person they muted or no notification for anyone about the bad boost, so it might stay undiscovered by members who could flag it for a while.
Kind of interesting… but I have little to no idea of what basecamp is. I suspect a developer tool? Which is to say, “boost” mightn’t mean the same thing to everyone. In Discord it has a meaning, likewise as noted in Mastodon. To me, the name evokes an algorithmic adjustment - I really don’t want an algorithmic feed in Discourse.
, 
, etc.) and a full-blown reply.
