Rating System (was: what even are social noises round N+1)

I feel like I'm not doing a good job of wordsing the thing, sorry. Informative and useful don't mean the exact same thing, because most words have different connotations, they're very rarely exactly the same. But these are like.... cousin reactions. [sympathy noises] and *offers comfort* aren't exactly the same, but they're close enough that having a general sympathy reaction puts people in the right approximate emotional vicinity.

Maybe definition smearing wasn't the exact right word to use, but I meant that having a reaction that clearly covers 'informative and/or useful'. Because you say you'll mainly use useful in the circumstances you encounter. But I honestly can't think of a circumstance where I'd use useful at all. If someone gives me information or has a (useful) insight, then they've informed me, just because of the nature of a text-based forum. If they link me to a (useful) resource, then it's still informative, because their action was informing me that the resource exists. That's my worldview. Even if informative went away, useful is so... incorrect for how I respond to the world that I would never use it. And obviously you feel differently.

But since the reactions are cousins, personal definitions on what each of those responses mean are going to vary SIGNIFICANTLY. I can understand what an 'informative' response thing means, because I use that one, but I would have no idea at all what somebody was trying to say if they marked my post useful. And again, obviously you feel differently. And I assume that everyone following along with the conversation has their own interpretations that may not line up with either of us. But a 'useful and/or informative' response would cover both of those, it would hopefully be easy for either of us to intuit a likely interpretation if we received the result, and it's a more generally usable button. I like mashup words because they make me happy and they're shorter than 'useful and/or informative', but that's what I meant, as humorous shorthand to refer to the slice of the response spectrum that falls between those two reactions.

 

I'm totally the worst about nitpicking definitions and connotations and context most of the time. It's just in this one case, especially as definitions are sliced thinner in the same emotional territory, every extra button shuts me out altogether just a bit more. I understand why the buttons are happening. But balancing needs would be really, really awesome. And I mostly feel like the most awful no-fun-allowed killjoy every time I post here. It isn't a terribly rewarding experience. But I have a hard time participating in social anything, anywhere, anytime. Even online, I was on the forum for like a year before I really nerved myself into jumping in. And it's kind of awful watching people suggest more and more additions with diminishing returns that will only make me struggle worse.

 

It occurred to me that if you could have the ratings display the name of the user whose post or account was involved, you could have a rating of "[username] no" but I think this would be of marginal utility with users other than me.

 

Anyway, for actual ideas: I am inclined to think that it makes sense to reduce the set of reactions more than to grow it. Because these aren't intended to solve every problem. The actual original problem was just "we have circumstances where liking posts seems like a bad idea but you want to express thing but also words are hard". That, and the specific thing of wanting a way to react to posts to indicate that they've been seen and processed. Because if I tried to reply to every individual post directed at me in a busy thread it'd be 2x-3x as much posting and that would be super annoying.

So, how about "Like", "Witnessed", and... I dunno, maybe just those two for a while, see how it goes?