XF 2.1 Reactions 👍😍🤣😲🙁😡

Welcome to the third in our "Have you seen...?" series for XF 2.1. We've had a phenomenal, er, reaction, to what we've shown so far. In case you haven't seen our previous two entries, you can check them out here.

As ever, to ensure you're kept up to date, we strongly recommend giving that "Watch forum" link a poke here and enabling email notifications if you haven't done so already 🙂

Today we're going to show you something that we have been talking about doing internally for quite some time - content reactions. This concept has been popular with XF users for a long time and has spawned some popular add-ons. We have quite possibly been talking about doing it since long before it was popularised by Facebook so, finally, here we are 🙂

Let's first look at how Reactions are set up in the Admin CP:

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As you can see, we've not exactly gone overboard in terms of the reactions we're shipping by default, but this felt like a sensible selection. We've added a concept of being able to assign either "Positive", "Negative" or "Neutral" to each reaction and although some of the default reactions have negative connotations, we decided not to assign any of them as "Negative" by default.

But, let's look at adding a new negative "Dislike" reaction:

localhost_21x_admin.php_reactions_add.webp

The process here should be fairly familiar if you have ever added new smilies as it uses a very similar approach for referencing the image/sprite. For your convenience we have included a "Dislike" icon in the sprite sheet should you wish to add it yourselves.

Most of this is self explanatory, but you will see we can also specify a "Text color". You'll see this in action... now!

21reactions.gif

The behaviour of the "Like" button isn't significantly different. You can still just click/tap the button to give a like (or remove the selected reaction) but to access other reactions you can hover over the link (or tap and hold on touch devices) and a tooltip will be displayed with your active reactions.

The "Text color" value we mentioned before is applied here to indicate your selected reaction. It is also displayed in the alert templates for reactions:

Screenshot 2018-10-15 at 18.45.54.webp

We have also redesigned the reaction summary:

Screenshot 2018-10-15 at 18.58.33.webp

And the reaction overlay with a new tabbed design:

Screenshot 2018-10-15 at 19.02.20.webp

And, of course, Reactions are sent through push notifications (if not opted-out):

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We also show a summary of the most popular reactions (up to 3) on the thread list:

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Finally, you'll notice that the primary statistic listed on member list items, member tooltips and member statistics is no longer just a simple "like count" but instead we're now tracking an overall "Reaction score".

This metric is the total number of positive reactions minus the total number of negative reactions.

localhost_21x_index.php_members_&key=highest_reaction_score (1).webp

Most of this is self explanatory so we're probably ok to leave it there without going into too much detail.

Still quite a bit more to go, so we'll see you again later this week for more 🙂

Developers: you may be wondering about a few technical details. We have a special HYS for you guys in a couple of weeks focusing on a bit more detail for some miscellaneous power user/developer changes, so stay tuned for that!
 
I just googled "icon for api" and I think you're right!
That said, there doesn't appear to be a logout button anywhere, and this new icon is in the same location as the logout button in 1.5, so it's probably more likely to be an account/logout button ...
 
s it looks now there will only be negative (-1), neutral (0) and positive (1) which makes the value of a horrible post the same as a dislikable post. And awesome posts are valued exactly the same as 'nice' posts.

The result will be that stellar members will not rise the ranks as they should. And problematic members will not go down as they should.

I think its very important to add weighting so that we can value the very bad or the very good.
A very good point. I don't use a reactions add-on but I'm guessing that some of these offer different weightings? It probably is a good idea to offer weightings that range at least between +2 and -2 (or even make it configurable by admins) so that those who want to use reaction weightings in a more flexible way can do so.
 
Bad Spelling: -1
Hate Speech: -1

Clearly those two do not equate.
I believe it is a UI design limitation for the UI score being -1/0/1. It should be doable for an add-on to modify the data entry, with the trade off being increased admin complexity
 
I think it would be a major improvement to add weighting to the core and I hope the XF team will consider the possibilities.
IMHO the UI design should allow for at least a 5 points score. Having a 3 points score is as limiting as a 3 star reviews rating UI. How much sense would a 3 star rating UI make?
 
Do you mean like VB's rep system? :)
I mean to be able to attribute a specific value in points to each rating, so that members who post very good posts gain points quicker than members who post mediocre posts. And similarly that members who post very bad posts, loose points quicker than members who post poor posts.

But essentially, if weighting is added it would be a small leap to use the reactions system as the basis to develop a reputation system addon. But that is another topic.

Another suggestion I would like to make is to add limitations for negative ratings. XenForo has shunned negative ratings purposely because of the problems those can bring when problematic members abuse these. Giving a community negative ratings is only a good idea if there are limits on the use/abuse of these. For example if I go around and rate all @Chris D 's posts with 'disagree' or another contentious rating then that is not constructive but highly annoying. For such cases there needs to be solutions. If a function can be abused then it will be. Here is what I propose:
  1. Usergroup permission per rating.
  2. Rating spread: Do not allow the member to rate the same user more often than 1 in X ratings.
  3. Disallow rating of ignored members posts.
 
The problem is when users disagree they will use the one with the most points. If a user sees P hate speech or fake news (MAGA) then they should probably report the post and have it deleted.
 
When we were buying TH reactions, we asked members for their inputs. All voted against any "NEGATIVE" reactions. So we disabled all negative reactions. But, that just could be us as we are a paid site.

As a rare case, we had 1 out 340+ paid members who was overly abusive. Mods just deleted the offending posts and banned the user for a fixed length of time. What if we want to keep TH Reactions on 2.1 and not use the core Reactions. Possible?
 
i can't wait to dislike many people posts all around the internet forums!!


im going to allow dislikes on my forum and im going to dislike everyones posts who make me mad!!

hip hip hooray for xenforo2!!


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Staaahp!! :D

This is turning into quite a nice batch of new features! I know my moderators are pretty much against any reactions other than "like," but I have a few weeks to convince them otherwise. ;) (Personally, I feel that if certain members who thrive on negativity keep getting posts disliked, it will either discourage them from posting or cause them to think about what they've written and start posting more positively.)

I do have a question for @Chris D though. Are there any permissions for this overlay?

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I can understand showing the summary (like we do now in 1.5 and 2.0), but if we use a negative reaction like "dislike," it's inevitable on larger forums that some members will follow others around and dislike their posts, or just habitually dislike everything they do not agree with. That will lead to more trouble for the members and especially the moderators, who will have a stream of private messages from Member A asking why Member B is going around and disliking all of their posts.

At worst, I could do a template edit and somehow disable the overlay. (Although I suppose I could also make it conditional for the staff usergroups.)

We always have to think ahead to deal with the 0.01% of lunatic members our forums attract. ;)
 
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