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Add Reactions to Pull Requests, Issues, and Comments

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Re: Add Reactions to Pull Requests, Issues, and Comments

#91

Post by mrharrison »

mrharrison wrote: post #51

-1 or the thumbs down reaction, I think is a mistake. They aren't usually that constructive, because most of the time they are used as retaliation against a specific user, instead of constructive criticism. If someone downvotes you, you tend to downvote them. At the least, it should be a privilege to down vote, like SO and HN do. http://stackoverflow.com/help/privileges/vote-down

This comment is basically a down vote of github's down vote. Comments should be the down vote, because someone needs to explain why a suggestion, answer, code change, submission, etc... is not a good option. If that comment (down vote) is a good idea, it will then be up voted.

Re: Add Reactions to Pull Requests, Issues, and Comments

#92

Post by krock »

jkire wrote: post #52

I wonder if this is too featureful? What is the difference between +1, heart, and hooray? Having just a +1 and -1 is unambiguous and probably covers the vast amount of use cases? Perhaps not, but I'd be very interested to know the reasoning between being choosing between "unambiguous" and expressive.

I think I will use them this way:

* '+1' to mean I like this feature or this issue affects me.

* 'heart' to mean I agree with a proposed solution, or pull request.

* 'hooray' when a solution is marked as fixed or a fix version has been posted for the issue.

There are no rules though, so we'll see.

Re: Add Reactions to Pull Requests, Issues, and Comments

#93

Post by ritchiea »

Lazare wrote: post #60
joepie91_ wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just want to elaborate on this a bit more: Implementing a downvote button is inviting baseless disagreement . It makes it socially acceptable to say that you disagree, without ever providing an argument or being expected to do so - this is precisely what you don't want, on what is supposed to be a constructive platform. This will (indirectly and directly) lead to populism, where unpopular opinions get dismissed out…

> Seriously, GitHub, this is rule one of designing constructive social platforms: you never ever ever implement a downvote button of any kind. It seems ironic you'd post this on a platform that has a downvote button.

It's not ironic. Votes here are used to push the best content to the top. On Github you're not looking for the best content you're collaboratively building software so the tools should be designed to foster collaboration.

Re: Add Reactions to Pull Requests, Issues, and Comments

#94

Post by jakobegger »

mrharrison wrote: post #51

-1 or the thumbs down reaction, I think is a mistake. They aren't usually that constructive, because most of the time they are used as retaliation against a specific user, instead of constructive criticism. If someone downvotes you, you tend to downvote them. At the least, it should be a privilege to down vote, like SO and HN do. http://stackoverflow.com/help/privileges/vote-down

I think that the -1 button definitely has a place on Github.

I use Github a lot for discussing future feature development, and in that context it is really valuable to see how many people think a feature is useful or not.

Github isn't primarily a social network. In a professional context it is essential that you can also express disagreement, or that you think something is a bad idea.

Re: Add Reactions to Pull Requests, Issues, and Comments

#95

Post by developer2 »

choward wrote: post #84
dcre wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are missing something :) e.g., top right corner on https://github.com/facebook/react/issues/6239

I still only see it for the comment and not the issue itself.

This is due to inconsistency from Github on the labeling of the issue text. That issue has no comments - the header shows "lostthetrail opened this issue 7 hours ago · 0 comments". The first "comment" you see is meant to be the original issue text, not a comment.

And yet... the header for that text says "lostthetrail commented 7 hours ago". Github repurposed the commenting system to stand in for the issue text itself. Side effect of a lazy implementation.

tldr; The first "comment" isn't a comment. It's the issue itself, and is where you add your reaction for the issue.

Re: Add Reactions to Pull Requests, Issues, and Comments

#96

Post by bendykstra »

DanBC wrote: post #82
joepie91_ wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just want to elaborate on this a bit more: Implementing a downvote button is inviting baseless disagreement . It makes it socially acceptable to say that you disagree, without ever providing an argument or being expected to do so - this is precisely what you don't want, on what is supposed to be a constructive platform. This will (indirectly and directly) lead to populism, where unpopular opinions get dismissed out…

Very many HN threads would be improved if people would just downvote for disagreement and shut the fuck up. Those downvotes would soon be corrected by other people reading the thread, and we wouldn't have to read bad tempered bickering.

That idea works in theory, but in practice it makes comments a popularity contest. Eventually, people with minority opinions figure out that their ideas are unpopular and leave or stop commenting. The end result is monoculture. A great illustration of this phenomenon is Reddit's politics subreddit. In theory, it is a place to discuss American politics. In practice, its discussion is almost entirely centered around a single candidate from one party. The downvote button windowed the community and then winnowed it again until a political atom remained.

Re: Add Reactions to Pull Requests, Issues, and Comments

#97

Post by rtpg »

gkoberger wrote: post #88
mrharrison wrote: post #51

-1 or the thumbs down reaction, I think is a mistake. They aren't usually that constructive, because most of the time they are used as retaliation against a specific user, instead of constructive criticism. If someone downvotes you, you tend to downvote them. At the least, it should be a privilege to down vote, like SO and HN do. http://stackoverflow.com/help/privileges/vote-down

Agreed 100% for Facebook or even Hacker News, however on GitHub it would be really useful for voting. If you ask "Should we add this feature?", it's hard to understand what favorites mean if you don't have an anchor. Does 10 thumbs-up mean unanimous support, or is it just a small minority? It'd be nice to say "Oh, 10 upvotes... but there's 90 downvotes, so we won't do it." FB and Hacker News are a marketplace of rela…

Internally when voting (informally) on things we do +1, +0, -0, and -1. Super helpful to be able to ask for everyone's opinion while they can also express the strength of their opinion.

Feel like that would be very useful

Re: Add Reactions to Pull Requests, Issues, and Comments

#98

Post by dabernathy89 »

city41 wrote: post #17

I think people will still write +1 comments because they won't notice this new feature, at least initially. It'd be nice if Github just converted "+1" comments into reactions.

Now it will be more appropriate to shame people for doing it, though, and hopefully that will eventually lead to changed behavior.

Re: Add Reactions to Pull Requests, Issues, and Comments

#99

Post by joeyespo »

adnzzzzZ wrote: post #81
joepie91_ wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People who don't agree with something should have a way of expressing their views. Why is it acceptable to have a +1 button but not a -1 button? Why can people agree without giving any reason for their agreement but they can't disagree without giving any reason for their agreement? Because when you agree, that means the argument has already been presented - specifically, it's the argument that you are agreeing with…

>That is not the case for disagreement The reason why Github added these votes in the first place is so that people can give a signal of how welcome or not a certain change is to the project. If you only provide the signal for agreement but remove the signaling for disagreement and make it costly, then you'll get more people voting one way than the other. If it costs more to disagree then you're already rigging the g…

-1

...

If I left the above with no further explanation, it doesn't give you any signal as to why I disagreed with you. One the other hand, if we were having this conversation on GitHub, people who agreed with my counter-point could react with a +1, giving you a much stronger signal about what exactly the disagreement is about.

And once someone provides a valuable counter-argument, it's no longer "rigged toward agreement."

Compared to an explanation with several +1's, a drive-by -1 adds virtually nothing to the discussion because they carry so little information.

Re: Add Reactions to Pull Requests, Issues, and Comments

#100

Post by gkoberger »

rtpg wrote: post #97
gkoberger wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed 100% for Facebook or even Hacker News, however on GitHub it would be really useful for voting. If you ask "Should we add this feature?", it's hard to understand what favorites mean if you don't have an anchor. Does 10 thumbs-up mean unanimous support, or is it just a small minority? It'd be nice to say "Oh, 10 upvotes... but there's 90 downvotes, so we won't do it." FB and Hacker News are a marketplace of rela…

Internally when voting (informally) on things we do +1, +0, -0, and -1. Super helpful to be able to ask for everyone's opinion while they can also express the strength of their opinion. Feel like that would be very useful

For what it's worth, the "thumbs down" emoji is named ":-1:".
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