I love the idea of the Dislike balancing out the Like... but in other parts of the fediverse there's just a Favourite button (which can used kind of like a bookmark/remember thing, as you can bring up a list of things you've favourited... that's a word! heh)

What about potentially replacing with emoji reactions?

https://git.pleroma.social/pleroma/pleroma/merge_requests/1662

I would vote for an option to disable/enable like, or dislike or both.on an account.At the end it is just a "not display" option, but since those gamification "actions" create more harm than fun, i would love if it is disabable.

Never been a fan of likes/dislikes. Just feels so wrong to give a thumbs up on a news story about a horrible tragedy.

I don't think there is any more harassment potential than in comments, especially since there is no notification but I am not seeing much use for it as no one else supports it.

I am not opposed to the idea but it just doesn't get traction so perhaps it should become optional as in theory some community might want to use it.

In my experience, unlike to a "like" a "dislike" most often includes a comment explaining the dislike. And in many cases the comment would not have been made without the click on the dislike button.

I don't see any particular evil in dislike feature itself and would keep it.
Also, huge "+1" for emoji reactions support.

As soon as i like (or dislike?) an article, i find it in my "personal"-timeline, so i use it as a kind of favorite marker.
Especially when you use third party apps like Fedilab, there is no other way to do so: when i activate this little favorite-star in Fedilab, the related article has a "like" in Friendica and becomes part of my personal timeline.

In this usecase it is a good and simple "have to read"-reminder beside storing things in folders. So the like-feature of Friendica shouldn't be removed.

"have-to-read",marker, which works across several apps

In theory, that is what the "star" is meant for, a personal fav / bookmark without notifying the author about the mark.

So in theory we have a feature request, but as long as this "bookmarking without notifying" doesn't work platform- and app-independent, we'll have to use the 'like'-feature for that.

But a feature request for the app you use to use the correct API for marking the posting when the star button is pressed and like the posting when the thumbs-up button is pressed.

The Friendica "starring" feature isn't connected to third party apps, like Tobias mentioned already.

If I recall correctly it is optional there.

It’s good if the meaning isn’t confusing to you, but this isn’t the case for everybody either.

I personally never understand a Like on a terrible news as an evil enjoyment of the news itself. I can do that because Like is a positive action by default, and you can’t subvert its meaning without adding some context. So for terrible news, I will understand a Like as a support.

As support for the one who did the terrible thing?

It’s possible, but unlikely and impossible to guess without context.

So if I break my leg, and someone dislikes it it is negative? For me that rather sounds positive that someone dislikes me having a broken leg. On the other hand if someone likes it, that would be negative from my point of view.

It's a possible interpretation, but if the Dislike wasn't available, I believe you would be less likely to feel that way.

If you change the meaning of the buttons, that is transmitted to other networks, where they still name it "like/dislike" you could change the statement completely. in the worst case.

Myself I like upvote/downvote the best.

Upvote means "I appreciate you posting this, great content, I agree" and such. Downvote means "Ugh, this is not for me".

It is feedback on content, not emotional expression. For that there are comments.

Also this way likes/dislikes can be used for further processing. E.g. if I downvote a post, don't subscribe me to it or maybe even hide it from my stream. If I like it then subscribe me for activity on it.

Why? "I like that you broke your leg" keeps the meaning regardless of the existing of the word "dislike".

I use the Like button to mean a read receipt when I don't have anything to add, this wouldn't work as much.

How many people (re)discovered the Dislike feature thanks to this thread?

Same (greater?) ambiguity with downvote, are you downvoting the content or its author? No way to tell without context. Upvoting is "safer". Hacker News, Stack Overflow and Reddit all use down votes and I regularly see comments from OP asking the meaning of downvotes since it's anonymous. So even with an accompanying comment it would still be confusing and irritating.

Dislike hast its right to exist, same as Like. See yourself on this example ;)

Of course you're free to understand a "like" as its first degree meaning even if the context shows there was no other possible interaction, but at this point it's a "you" problem we can't fully accommodate. Incidentally I believe emoji reactions would be a better solution for you in this case.

How does the context in this example "show" that you don't mean that you like me having a broken leg?

I would read a "Like" as "I am with you". So whether you write something positive or negative it says "I look at it in a similar way you do". This could be a statement like "Hey cool, i have a broken leg and will stay at home on my sofa" or "My next long planned trip is cancelled because of a broken leg".
On the other hand a "Like" for "Chelsea Manning under arrest" depends on whether the author is Amnesty International or the actual Potus.

In the end a "Like" says something about me. Same fo "Dislike", but maybe a litte more complicated.

Because of the extremely limited range of available reactions. and the unlikelihood of such a meaning. Both combined means that you can safely assume good faith from everyone who added a "Like" on your broken leg post.

Which means even if someone actually meant to show they enjoy your predicament, they couldn't adequately convey it with a "Like" only.

For me downvoting always felt as content quality feedback and nothing else. But I suppose someone might see it differently.

And on the other hand do we really need this on social networks? In places like Reddit this has practical function of filtering and refining the best content. Not perfect, can be misused but it has a purpose.

But isn't social networking different? What is the point of downvoting (or disliking) here? The authors here are generally not in search of truth or public approval, they just express themselves. Most probably don't mind criticism (I certainly don't) but what message do dislikes convey? That someone just disliked my cat or political statement? What should I do with this information? Be upset? Go dislike something back? Stop being myself?

This probably has value for professional bloggers but not ordinary people.

Interesting. I would never assume such a way of using those buttons.

Why assume "good faith" in a like but not a dislike? I really don't get the distinction between the two that you are implying.

Both have a very simple meaning, why assume "good faith" for the one meaning but not the other.

Because it isn't the same meaning? Like has a positive tone, dislike has a negative tone.

But the meaning of the word "like" does not change.

If I know the person who liked the broken leg posting I can put such assumptions and "good faith" in the meaning of the word "like" because I know that person. But not in the word itself.

And the same is true for the word "dislike". There is no difference between the two cases.

Again, if you can't grasp that a specific word can have multiple meanings depending on context, while also having a primary acception with a definite positive or negative tone, there is nothing meaningful I can add to this conversation. "Like" and "Dislike" are different words with different meaning with different tones. The difference in tone sets the difference in usage as well.

In the four years I've been using Friendica with the dislike feature, nobody has commented on one of my post to clarify a "Like" they added because they weren't sure of the reception. However it happened last month with "Dislike".

There is a difference between the two cases and I'm running out of arguments to help you see it.

It's true but meaningless in the larger scheme. Not all Friendica posts are that factually binary.

Concerning the "harassment potential": I've got the opinion that you cannot solve social problems with technology.

It's true but technology can still enable or damper negative behaviors. Twitter's all-public centralized model definitely enabled mass pile-on, while Mastodon's choice to not support quote-boost makes it slightly harder to add a snide remark to a boosted toot. Sometimes it's all it takes to prevent a toxic behavior from scaling/spreading.

This is a similar situation: removing the "Dislike" button wouldn't solve online animosity, but it would remove an easy one-click outlet for it, increasing the effort threshold for its expression.

No, it is not meaningless. It is a perfect example of how the dis/like buttons can be used.

Yes, but do we want to make them a priority feature-wise?

"in the larger scheme". This means it is statistically insignificant. It doesn't happen often enough to warrant a specific treatment. Its very low likelihood makes it irrelevant regarding the dislike feature removal question.

Maybe, but the final decision still shouldn't be based on sport result posts.

Also not a single dislike used :)

Restore the user-controlled additional feature for dislikes. It would just hide the button but still allow display of received dislikes.

Maybe your feeling is not a better argument than the feeling of somebody else? Maybe you can't see you are making differences, where others don't feel or see differences because you put a very small spotlight on some examples, instead they try to see the whole picture?

If it is all about feelings on some not explained actions, we shouldn't even think about using emojis or anything else. If we want to prevent misunderstanding, we should eliminate every action except comments. And even then there are still misunderstandings, because people write and people read and there are always interpretations you can't control.

So why not go the configurable way and let everybody decide it if is displayed or not?

There are a lot such binary posts. So you lose the ability to dislike such posts.

This never had to do with my own feelings. The removal idea was actually sparked by @Spencer ’s feelings which are shared by other people in this thread.

So this isn’t personal, but it is about feelings and how prominent they are among Friendica users. Tobias’ are very specific and probably can’t be catered to by a solution that assumes meaning depends on context, which it generally does.

Although this wouldn’t prevent harassment through dislikes.

Maybe, but the final decision still shouldn't be based on other niche topics.

The "you" stands for the people you are speaking for. As I said it is always that people interpreting things. And a "like" is as evil or as good as a "dislike" depending how you interpret it.

I've created a week-long public poll to synthesize the community's opinions. I've included as many outcomes that I could think of: https://nextcloud.mrpetovan.com/index.php/apps/polls/s/WYtWDGTxR32CTVQC

Please add all your preferred choices.

Concerning different possible configuration options, these ones would be possible and had a completely different impact:
- Don't show the "dislike" button, but display received dislikes
- Don't show the "dislike" button and ignore received dislikes
- Don't show the "dislike" button and count received dislikes as likes
- Show the "dislike" button and ignore received dislikes
- Show the "dislike" button and count received dislikes as likes

I'm for keeping it. Its the nearest thing to a poll we have. There is also an API for dislikes which I use. So if you change the code please tell the client programmer in time.

@Hypolite Petovan
TL;DR
Remove the dislike and introduce emoji reactions instead. See mastodom and github for example.

There are less answers on the poll than people who interacted in this thread, I'd like everyone to be able to express their opinion, please participate in the poll: https://nextcloud.mrpetovan.com/index.php/apps/polls/s/WYtWDGTxR32CTVQC

I thought you just wanted to change the label but keep the same message structure.

Dislike is a valid actitivystreams2 activity: https://www.w3.org/TR/activitystreams-vocabulary/#dfn-dislike. Other ActivityPub systems might implement it in the future.

@Michael Vogel mentioned it as well and I crossed it out from the list of reasons I wanted to remove it from Friendica but maybe the edit doesn't propagate to the forum because I don't own the post anymore.