Friday, 1st April 2016, 03:28 by amaril
Seeing as this is a forum focused on game design, I suppose it is only natural that the topic of 'forum design' would come up at some point. Anyways: The tricky thing about this issue is that (as always) there are good reasons either way and ultimately the 'correct' decision depends on your vision for this forum/community.
Benefits of Thanks: Thanks allow for the convenient, nonintrusive communication of a minor message ("I agree with/appreciate your post") that would otherwise be spam. Sometimes you agree with a post but do not want to add anything--Thanks allow your 'voice' to be heard. Another benefit of Thanks is that a Thank is pretty much a strictly 'positive' message, on a forum that can (due to the nature of its focus) often get 'negative' or critical. Finally, Thanks allow for a demonstration of consensus and can provide a well-reasoned post (which might otherwise get lost) with a degree of credibility to someone skimming the forum.
Detriments of Thanks: The biggest problem with Thanks is that they encourage hive-mind-ish behavior. Once a new poster sees that posts of a certain strain of thought receive many thanks, that new poster may assume that this viewpoint is the 'correct viewpoint' even though it is really just an opinion (backed by a moderate, but not necessarily representative, degree of consensus). Posters may start posting in such a way as to earn 'Thanks' (because egos are a thing), i.e. echoing 'memes' rather than contributing real thought to the conversation. This is especially a problem when Thank totals are shown.
If you value the social forum experience, Thanks are appealing--taken to its extreme, the logic that led to Thanks would possibly lead to a Reddit-esque voting system where the most-liked posts are the most visible.
If you value the anonymous discussion experience, Thanks are problematic--taken to its extreme, this sort of thinking would lead to total anonymity among posters (no presumptions of credibility whatsoever--each post is judged on merit/content alone).
Ultimately, the 'best' solution can be somewhere between these two extremes. Personally, I liked how the forum was when posts were Thankable but Thanks totals were not shown. I am ok with a Thankless forum too, though.
edit: apparently there are already multiple discussions about this topic going on in Feedback & Criticism--something brought up there that I hadn't thought about was the fact that Thanks can be used sarcastically.
- For this message the author amaril has received thanks: 3
- archaeo, Piginabag, wheals
