Feedback requested: EA Forum reactions

I'd consider adding a single negative reaction -- a generic disagree -- to posts. I'd rather people select that than downvoting karma to express disagreement, which is I think what too often happens.

I think retaining the ability to anonymously express agreement or disagreement in some fashion is critical -- and would prefer that mechanism not be karma-upvote/downvote. My recollection is that some people have expressed concerns about what they say on the Forum in good faith having an adverse professional impact on them. Whether or not those concerns are well-founded in fact, disallowing the option for anonymity may render reported levels of support for a post or comment less accurate.

I've only recently started posting on EA Forum, so my 2 cents may be useful as feedback from a newbie, but also with the caveat that it's from a newbie!
 

1. Often times I just want to say "thank you for making the effort, for taking the time, for writing this post and/or for doing the research behind it". This can be separate from judgment about quality or agreement, it's just saying "I see you put a lot of effort into this, and I appreciate that." Even just to say "I read this". My fear when writing a new post is not that people will disagree with it (which sparks useful discussion), but rather that nobody will read it at all, and my time will have been wasted. So I think any kind of feedback that says "thanks for writing this" or "I read this" or just tracks the number of reads, can be important, especially for people who are new to the forum and don't have a ready audience. 

2. Related to the above, I'd appreciate clarity on how people feel about short, positive feedbacks, like "great post" or "fully agree". It's interesting that you say people would like more of this, because my natural reaction has always been to do that on every forum I've ever been on when I read a good post, usually with a few words explaining what I particularly liked. But here I don't feel comfortable doing that - literally. It feels out-of-place, as if people don't like that. Almost all the comments I see are about disagreements. (this is a very subjective, non-data-based impression!)

3. Feedback is a wonderful gift, and EA Forum readers are a great resource. If someone spends X minutes reading my post or comment, I would LOVE to know what they think of it. Especially the disagreements or constructive feedback, so I can get better. I've got a few negative karmas where there was no comment to indicate what exactly the disagreement or feedback was. I didn't really know what to do with them. Someone took some of their valuable time to read my post, and thought about it - and I appreciate that. Then they gave some feedback on my post, which is great. Except that the feedback doesn't really tell me what they think I should change! Feedback in the form of words will help me write better next time. I totally know my posts need work, just point me in the right direction :). If people feel bad about writing constructive (negative?) comments publicly, is there an option for "visible only to author" comments or even "anonymous and visible only to author" comments? 

It's great that you're looking into this, it can make the Forum even better! 

my two cents:

• I love the addition of a reaction for 'changed my mind', the rest I'm less excited for - what value does the eg. heart reaction add?
• Forum styled looks much better to me

At present we have like/dislike, and agree/disagree, but nothing for this contributes to the type of discourse we want to see on the forum EA. I don't think this is a major issue, but I'd love to see something like this contributes to making the forum a better place, or this detracts from making the forum a better place. I occasionally see a comment that isn't making a claim (and thus can't be disagreed with), but I which I dislike because it is tangential to the topic being discussed or it otherwise detracts from the level of discourse.

It might be that karma was originally intended to serve this purpose.

EdoArad @ 2023-06-06T07:32 (+7)

this is how I generally try to up/downvote, but I agree that it isn't at all clear. I now see that the hint is about how much you "like" this:

This seems like it can be improved

Jeroen Willems @ 2023-06-06T22:38 (+2)

Very much agree. I use upvotes/downvotes to indicate what I would like to see more/less of on the forum. Making that clearer in the pop-up would be great!

Sharang Phadke @ 2023-06-06T23:01 (+1)

I do think karma is a bit of a catch-all, and mostly I think that's OK. We need a way to integrate a diversity of positive / negative sentiment into a metric, even if people have different reasons for their votes.

In terms of the tool tip, the other sites lack any explanation for their "upvote" or "like" buttons, and one of the reasons we have a whole explanation is to differentiate karma-votes from agree-votes, which other sites don't have.

That said, It's possible that reactions will help call out some of the behaviors we want to encourage on the Forum, like truth-seekingness and helpfulness. We're also open to other suggestions for core reactions, but as mentioned in the post we do value simplicity.

The LessWrong version includes many negatively valenced reacts, most of which seem to represent meaningful attitudes people might want to express. Are there any particular features of the EA Forum that differ from LessWrong in a way that means we want a much more positively-biased collection here?

A lot of these suggestions make sense, but it's very hard to anticipate in advance what will work!

So I would just adopt a 'rapid prototyping'/'agile marketing' mindset in trying these things out, and be willing to update and improve them over a few iterated cycles, without expecting that we'll get everything right the first time.

For example, I think it could be helpful to have a few different emoji-type reactions available, but I have no idea whether the optimal number of these is closer to 3, or closer to 8. I guess if you try some, it would be important to gather ongoing data about which ones are used most often, which ones provoke the most puzzlement or frustration, etc.

We could also nudge some of our EA Forum norms a little bit, reminding people it's OK to leave quite short comments (whether supportive or critical)-- maybe especially on posts that we like, but that are getting a bit neglected by others, in ways that might be disappointing to the authors.

Forum style most definitely

Questions and comments in no particular order:

1. Would we be able to select multiple reactions? I love being able to do that on slack. 
2. I agree that the upvote/downvote and agree/disagree options in the comments are confusing.
3. I'm a little confused about the truth-seeking option because it seems to be more of a label/status for the commenter or poster rather than a reaction from the reader. 
4. The checkmark, heart, and celebrate seem like they all serve about the same purpose of liking the post, but they seem fluffy and I can't see more substance to them other than being generally supportive. 
5. I like the "changed my mind" one the best. I would love to receive that reaction the most.
6. Maybe there could be an "intrigued" or "confused" option? That would indicate that reactors want to hear more either in the form of elaboration or clarification.
7. A "fire" emoji for spicy or hard hitting posts?
8. A "sad" emoji for sympathy?
9. A "X" emoji for disagreeing seems good.
10. Some sort of emoji for "not helpful" could provide good feedback when there isn't a reason to disagree per se. However, it might also discourage people from commenting more on the forum unless they feel they have something high quality to say. 
11. I like the standard emoji colors better and I think people would engage more with those.
12. I think reactions should not be anonymous.