Huskies: remove, leave, replace? Than?

After the news about testing hiding likes on Instagram and Vkontakte, I thought about the purpose and alternatives of these marks in terms of managing information and consequences.



In this article, I would like to speculate about options, wording, and how changes could affect user behavior. I hope with your help to complete the picture. Like here is understood as a generalized opportunity in one click to express your attitude to the material.

Like features

• The easiest way to express attitude to the material
• Feedback for the author
• Landmark for other users.

Like Options

• Just Like, Heart, Clapping hands - either bet or not (Instagram, Twitter, Medium, Facebook, Bitrix24). It must be clarified that on Facebook and exactly in Bitrix24 you can choose one of 6 emotions, but regardless of the reaction chosen, it is considered as approval of the publication.

• Likes or dislikes that are considered independent (Youtube)
• Likes and dislikes are placed on the scales, i.e. deducted from each other (Habr, VC)
• Evaluation at school. The user can put both 1 and 5 with equal ease. But they prefer not to give bad marks. (Classmates)
• Favorites (early Twitter, and as an additional option, for example, in Habr, VC)

Weak spots

• Inadvertent promotion of populism (simpler to read and emotionally colored posts gain more likes than solid and complex materials). For example, in our corporate Bitrix24, the most appreciated materials that have been hanging for weeks on the Polular website are birthday greetings and farewell letters in the style of “today is my last day”. No working and often important information, which forms the basis of the tape, has such like support. What I decided to do with it was described here.
• Reputation has a significant impact on ratings. Popular authors more easily gain likes both due to the greater number of subscribers and due to the halo.
• The concentration of many authors on the quantitative assessment of publications, entailing both substantive and psychological consequences.
• Likes or dislikes cannot be considered high-quality feedback for the author, since they do not convey the reasons for high or low ratings.
• If the author’s general karma is not tightly coupled with the ratings of his articles (for example, Habr), it is theoretically possible that a positively evaluated article leads to a negative assessment of karma.
• Likes or dislikes are not relevant for holivar themes. In these cases, the assessment is a consequence of the author’s attitude to the topic, and not the quality of the argument. For example, on Youtube such videos can have a very close number of likes and dislikes.

What could be changed and what effect should be expected?

One of the valuable features of a like is standard. Like is like a “sandwich” menu in mobile applications. On any platform, you immediately understand how to interact with it. You look for him, you are surprised if you do not find it right away. However, due to the weaknesses described above, such standardization does not always benefit the case. In my opinion, different platforms should look for their options for improving the familiar solution.



Reflecting on hypothetical options, I do not want to miss even the most absurd at first glance options.

Hypothetical options

• “Thank you” or “This is important” - as a wording like that emphasizes the substantial importance of the material for the rating user. Suitable for corporate portals like Bitrix24.
• Certain quality tags (“Inspires”, “Passionate”, “Practically Useful”, etc.) indicating the number of each tag supported. Suitable for text platforms like Medium, Habr, VC. A list of positive and negative tags that readers can assign to an article is created in advance. This information is visible to everyone. Other users can simply vote for tags already assigned. Can be used for sorting: Inspirational articles, Practical articles, etc.
• Limitation of the ability to evaluate holistic topics beyond pre-expressed preferences. Roughly speaking, if a user is subscribed to the conditional “chanson”, why should he be given the opportunity to hit Nyusha?
• Automatic freezing of votes upon reaching a certain level of negative ratings (similar to stopping trading on the exchange in the event of sharp drops). Such a system can protect the author from “killing" a reputation.
• Various forms of restrictions on the number of ratings given by the user over a certain period of time: 1) The number of negative ratings cannot exceed the number of positive ones - as protection against inveterate haters; 2) Direct restriction of the daily number of likes and dislikes in equal (1: 1) or unequal proportions (for example, 10: 1). The option to cast more than one vote per material is theoretically possible, but in practice, it seems, will lead to easier markups.
• Eurovision is a limited number of defined ratings. Perhaps such a system will work well as an additional one. By the end of the month, each user selects only 12 of the best he likes and ranks them from 1 to 12. An invitation to vote is a good reason for a resource to remind himself of himself by e-mail or in a push notification.

Continue?



UPD



There are five different “reactions” in LinkedIn since April, but they also add up (although you can see the contribution separately)