My apologies if i missed a comment, but I'm surprised how few people support "giving it a go" and then deciding if it's good or bad.
There's a multitude of user approaches, lots of people very touchy about their way of doing things (some extra so as this relates to their profession)
Whilst not wishing to appear a fanboy, clearly Github have put a decent amount of thought into this, they've got a fairly good track record and they're responsive. If it's poor, they'll reassess it.
Add Reactions to Pull Requests, Issues, and Comments
211–220 of 238 posts
Re: Add Reactions to Pull Requests, Issues, and Comments
#212Funny how I wanted to +1 this blog post =)
Re: Add Reactions to Pull Requests, Issues, and Comments
#213-1 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.
But there could already be a reasonable explanation for -1 vote in the thread. Are you suggesting to repeat it or write "agree with @foobar on his comment"? That's more noise.
Re: Add Reactions to Pull Requests, Issues, and Comments
#214Earlier 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
C++ standardization votes on a 5-point scale: Strong For, For, Neutral, Against, Strong Against. I think it's important to be able to express the lack of an opinion, although I guess you could do that on a 4-point scale by abstaining.
Re: Add Reactions to Pull Requests, Issues, and Comments
#215Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Pretty much any subreddit reaches this state with sufficient time.
Re: Add Reactions to Pull Requests, Issues, and Comments
#216Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's naive to think that users will prefer the discreet way of expressing disapproval. They want to be loud.
Facebook and Twitter provide strong evidence that people will use reactions. I see no reason to expect that user behavior will differ when they want to express negativity. Facebook's decision to not provide this feature has long been rooted on the pretense that people will use it. That is the basis of this thread: that people will use it instead of commenting. Also, it's really easy to disagree with what I wrote with…
> Also, it's really easy to disagree with what I wrote without suggesting I am naive.
Hence proving the commenters point about negative comments :-/
Re: Add Reactions to Pull Requests, Issues, and Comments
#217Earlier quoted context omitted.
In a professional context it is essential that people can express disagreement provided they write exact reasons why they disagree. You know, "+1" usually has only one meaning: - "I agree with whatever you're saying". "-1" has however two separate meanings: - "I disagree with whatever you're saying because I believe that blah-blah-blah (reasons here)" - "I disagree with whatever you're saying because fuck you that's…
You know, "+1" usually has only one meaning: Nonsense. - Agreement: "I agree with whatever you're saying" - Contributory : "I don't agree with what you're saying, but you elaborated your point *very* well and contributed to the discussion" - Mercy: "I don't agree with what you're saying, but the hivemind punished you for no good reason, have an upvote" - Popularity: "I like you and will +1 anything you write" - Thank…
"Popularity" and "Thanks" happen, those aren't very strong emotions. Sure people +1 post or two, but it wears off quickly.
"Mercy" is a very popular way to counteract -1's, but it disappears if we get rid of the ability to minus a post.
I believe "Contributory" is very rare as is. Hard to distinguish it from "Agreement" though.
Re: Add Reactions to Pull Requests, Issues, and Comments
#218-1 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
Disagreement should not be restricted to only those who are willing to stick their neck out and publicly disagree and state their reasons.
Imagine this scenario. Linus Torvalds posts an utterly inane pull request. Who is willing to deal with the backlash of "disagreeing with Linus". Sure, many are, but many are not.
Re: Add Reactions to Pull Requests, Issues, and Comments
#219Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Well, politics is a popularity contest.
If you actually wanted a discussion of political philosophy or to discuss other less popular candidates, there's other places for that.
Re: Add Reactions to Pull Requests, Issues, and Comments
#220Could they convert the exiting "+1" comments into reaction?
How would they know which comment to attribute them to?
Something like
^\s*(:\+1:|\+\d+)\s*\!*\s*$