No, no, no. Like buttons have a very strong psychological impact on hwo people interact with a forum and not for the better. DIYaudio is a highly informative forum that I value pretty high, any form of poplarity, likes or whatever is a straight ticket to mediocracy. Don't go there.
And for example, my own system sounds bloody mighty good for a great deal because of DIYaudio and because of posts and topics that where far away from mediocracy that would have been buried away underneath 'popular' topics. It is the at first glance not so popular visons that sets DIYaudio apart form the rest. Like buttons are simply horrible in that regard, they where invented by social media to get them addicted to them. This is a serious forum, not a highly commercial social media. I would be willing to pay $25,- a year for a subscription to keep it 'like button' free.
Sorry for my rant for the fourth or even fifth time on this topic but I'm 1000% against it. Like buttons are no good, please please please don't ever go there
Rant over.
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I haven’t needed or used Facebook in a long while (I certainly wasn’t traumatized by my experience on it) so the guilt by association of certain features doesn’t exist for me. I simply had to go to other audio related forums to see the feature in effect to have my mind changed towards the positive. Behaving as if polarizing political posts manipulated by dystopian corporate agendas and magnified by follower counts is indicative of the way something plays out here is just catastrophic thinking.
At any rate, point number 1 in my original post is personally of more importance.
The test platform (and most every other XF site I use) doesn’t do away with the existing base structure of sections for the forum. It does add a much better version of the ‘subscriptions’ function, which is the ‘notifications’ bit. You can indeed ‘follow’ people who post good stuff to get notified when they post in a thread too, if you want to filter out most of the day to day chatter.
100% agree on both counts :wink:
Lol, there’s already a “friend” and “follow” feature here so I think you’re overreacting a bit.
I responded to your first point (agreed, substantively) but completely forgot to get to the second one (which I disagree with). Others here have taken care of that, but I'd like to expand on it a little bit.
This is a fairly technical forum, more so than most of the places a newb might visit on the internet. I'm amazed at how well-balanced this place is because its not quite meter-head and not quite audiophile. I think the focus being on actual "DIY" has lead to this.
To distill down the responses to tech questions to the "like count" next to the post discounts all of the discussion that goes on in a thread. This is not the Apple Support Forums, where people want to get a quick best answer so they can move on with their life. If someone here posted a question about transformer secondaries, for example, I'd rather read what everyone has to say instead of just seeing the "best" answer voted to the top. Otherwise I'd miss what would surely be some informative discussions between people who are in one place or another on the great scale that has "meter head" at one end and "audiophool" at the other.
Perhaps Jan. I do know this: on many occasions, early on in threads, the most insightful or helpful post gets lost because either it was delivered in a curmudgeonly tone or it was too contradictory to the spirit of the OP. When you’re inexperienced, trolls and curmudgeons are often indistinguishable.
Here’s food for thought: “likes” (or whatever) to posts don’t put threads at the top of the pile like a post does. This might work wonders for contentious threads where a simple post is enough to rekindle some endless debate.
Don't get me wrong, I'm all for a personal tagging system where I can tag posts or topics for future use or just out of interest as long as this is private and not public.
There have been psyhcological studies about the behaviour of people on social media and online discussion fora and the "instant gratisfaction factor' in the form of earned likes was one of the main reason why people came back and responded to posts. In other words, it is directing the way a topic heads. People will come back to see how many likes they have earned and eventually their style of writing will change all for earning more likes, not for a usefull contribution to the topic. Almost all people are sensitive to this, even the people who think they are not senstive to it. I'm really serious about this, like buttons will completely change this forum and not for the better.
There have been psyhcological studies about the behaviour of people on social media and online discussion fora and the "instant gratisfaction factor' in the form of earned likes was one of the main reason why people came back and responded to posts. In other words, it is directing the way a topic heads. People will come back to see how many likes they have earned and eventually their style of writing will change all for earning more likes, not for a usefull contribution to the topic. Almost all people are sensitive to this, even the people who think they are not senstive to it. I'm really serious about this, like buttons will completely change this forum and not for the better.
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Sjef, are you suggesting that people might start bickering here, in this forum?
Seriously the idea that copying the body of whole posts and creating a new post just to register ones appreciation (and in doing so reigniting any attendant contention) is somehow worse than a simple register that does none of those things (and is easily ignored) is absurd.
Seriously the idea that copying the body of whole posts and creating a new post just to register ones appreciation (and in doing so reigniting any attendant contention) is somehow worse than a simple register that does none of those things (and is easily ignored) is absurd.
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Hmm, interesting subject I've never paid any attention/given any thought to beyond 'like' if a YT video pleased me, otherwise on forums I do the [+1] if completely agree with a post or 
for completely 'like', so buttons to only express these sentiments would be fine for me.
As for 'dislike', I either ignore or ~ politely tell them why in as much detail as necessary, so I guess whatever suits ya'll is fine.
for completely 'like', so buttons to only express these sentiments would be fine for me.As for 'dislike', I either ignore or ~ politely tell them why in as much detail as necessary, so I guess whatever suits ya'll is fine.
Well, we all know that on most audio forums, purely technical replies that try to dissolve magical thinking are not always popular; even if they are correct. Distilling this into a popularity contest will 100% degrade the quality of the content.
Myself, I turn notifications/badges off wherever they are implemented. They are nothing but a timewaster and I couldn't care less how popular my replies are. Notifications also tend to use a lot of computer/processor resources, certainly in Chrome.
Myself, I turn notifications/badges off wherever they are implemented. They are nothing but a timewaster and I couldn't care less how popular my replies are. Notifications also tend to use a lot of computer/processor resources, certainly in Chrome.
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Brinkman, if it were as simple as replacing quoting a section of a post and thanking, with a button, sure, but that isnt usually how this pans out.
When we do that, it has no effect on how and what content is presented to us. With likes and upvotes etc, the number of likes a post/comment/thread receives, often has a direct effect on what content is presented to you. ie, that is what is shown to you first and the rest is either not shown to you at all, or you have to manually search for it.
When we do that, it has no effect on how and what content is presented to us. With likes and upvotes etc, the number of likes a post/comment/thread receives, often has a direct effect on what content is presented to you. ie, that is what is shown to you first and the rest is either not shown to you at all, or you have to manually search for it.
I absolutely agree with this.
What I like about classic forums like diyaudio is the lack of "popularity- features", along the lines of Facebook, reddit et al. Any sort of popularity feature degrades the signal to noise ratio.
Yes, this sort of situation would remain unchanged.
AVS forum, Parts Express tech-talk forum, Audio Science Review and hificircuit seem fine to me in this regard. What am I missing?
Yes, badges for post count and accumulated likes are not a good idea and as far as I can tell nobody is suggesting we employ them. Same for upvotes which break the continuity.
What it really boils down to me is this: there is a lot of leeway to be quite rude on this forum so I think it might be encouraging to have an efficient way to be more polite.
As has been stated before, there is already “friends”, “follow” and badges for donating to this forum and I’m getting the impression that there are members here who would love to see such features banished. See the Pass amplifier giveaway thread for some very sad examples of members finding a way to be offended by generosity and goodwill.
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I don’t think one can just attribute a lack of certain features with a higher SNR. There are audio forums out there that are virtually useless when it comes to SNR and have none of these features. Then there are audio forums with some of these features (as mentioned above) that I frequent because - depending on the topic - the SNR is much better than here. So it’s obviously more complicated than that.
Brinkman,
I think that you have the cause and affect backwards in this case.
When the forum has features, such as a Like button, that help lower the SNR, that will attract people to the forum, who will take actions to lower the SNR. People who are interested in popularity inherently result in a lower SNR. When you remove features which are based on popularity, these people will leave because the forum has nothing that really interests them, which is a good thing.
I think that you have the cause and affect backwards in this case.
When the forum has features, such as a Like button, that help lower the SNR, that will attract people to the forum, who will take actions to lower the SNR. People who are interested in popularity inherently result in a lower SNR. When you remove features which are based on popularity, these people will leave because the forum has nothing that really interests them, which is a good thing.
I'm mostly a lurker, but I've got a fair bit of experience in forum software transitions - and have a habit of being able to break things in ways that nobody else thought of trying
I am a "Microsoft insider" so got Win 11 about 6 months ago.
To start with it crashed quite a few times from current program lock up to a complete PC freeze and ctrl alt del did nothing.
I use my pc for desktop and website programming so not a good situation to be in. If I find a way out of dev mode I will get out quick.
A forum though should be fine.
How would this behavior not already be curtailed by removing all incentives for such behavior? Please explain how your hypothetical scenario plays out in absence of any status attached to one’s profile. Because I’m primarily concerned with making it easier to give likes, not incentivizing getting them. I just don’t see any real-world objections to this, at least ones that don’t raise concerns over behavior that could just as easily exist with the forum as it is right now. What I do see is members having the ability to simply “+1” a post; a window for which is closed the moment anyone posts literally anything else after that.