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:

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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:

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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!
 
Is it possible to use different sprite sheets for different styles? Or reactions for that matter?
After inspecting the elements with the browser tools I think it is possible with custom css, but it may require a lot of work depending on the amount of reactions on your site.
 
This is one reason why we don’t ship any negative reactions by default.

You can always just revoke their reaction permissions when it becomes apparent that this is what they’re doing. I don’t think it needs a new way of logging that, the affected user(s) would usually speak up if they feel bothered by such a pattern.

It’s not even a new issue. We’ve had to have words with members before who are going around giving likes to the same users over and over just to be annoying.
So, I've looked in several threads on the forums and I guess I'm still a little confused...although being still morning it's not surprising for me. Caffeine hasn't hit yet.

I know you were talking about Xon converting the mod they currently had to a "limit likes" mod, which I believe was declined doing. Anyways, is there an option to do this (I haven't found it in ACP) in any of the files to change or add a little coding? If not, rather than just PMing all the members who are abusing it to stop and/or banning/discouraging them...is there a reason why we can't limit per user or per forum? I had 141 "reactions" to past posts in threads and status updates this morning in a 14-hour period (I know...it's excessive). While I love xF since converting, I remember IPB had this limit (I set to 25 per 24-hour period). Was just curious on why not have this or maybe a new feature in 2.2?
 
Why limit it?

If a member genuinely reads 30 posts they like/find useful/appreciate in a 24 hour period, why prevent them from showing that appreciation?

It's not as if they're going to add an entry to their calendar to remind them to like posts the next day.
 
It's the non-genuine likes which are problematic.

We have seen cases of "Like abuse" - used in either one of two ways: 1) friends colluding to like each other's posts for the purposes of making themselves seem more important than other people (often used by people with business relationships trying to promote each other), and 2) a passive-aggressive attack on others by liking every post which disagrees with their own point of view or ideology.

I've mapped like use by user (who they liked and who liked them) and it can be quite enlightening to see the patterns.

On another site, I have several users who like content literally 10x more frequently than the next highest likers.

I'm not sure that limiting likes is the answer to everything - but it can be useful in some circumstances.
 
I think it's more a problem that you don't necessarily know about it until after the event - it's not as if we get notified about people who have liked posts.

It's difficult to moderate likes/reactions when you could simply limit the activity to cut out the extreme cases of abuse.

Just because it doesn't suit your needs, doesn't mean it can't be a useful tool for someone else's requirements. That's why options exist - you turn on the features you want to use and turn off those you don't.
 
It's the non-genuine likes which are problematic.

We have seen cases of "Like abuse" - used in either one of two ways: 1) friends colluding to like each other's posts for the purposes of making themselves seem more important than other people (often used by people with business relationships trying to promote each other), and 2) a passive-aggressive attack on others by liking every post which disagrees with their own point of view or ideology.

I've mapped like use by user (who they liked and who liked them) and it can be quite enlightening to see the patterns.

On another site, I have several users who like content literally 10x more frequently than the next highest likers.

I'm not sure that limiting likes is the answer to everything - but it can be useful in some circumstances.
Turn 'em off. If they want to give kudos they can make a post.
It's difficult to moderate likes/reactions when you could simply limit the activity to cut out the extreme cases of abuse.
Orrrrr take the reactions ability away from the identified abusers only?
 
Orrrrr take the reactions ability away from the identified abusers only?

That example I mentioned for one of my sites where there are several people who like things literally 10x more than anyone else - I've analysed who they are giving likes to and there doesn't seem to be any pattern or signs of abuse - they simply like things far too much. I've tried explaining that liking things too much is like making every day your birthday - it's no longer special if you simply like everything.

It's mostly evident in our galleries - they are liking hundreds of photos each day (we get a lot of new uploads every day).

In this case I'm not especially interested in cutting off their ability to give likes completely - but it would still be useful to limit the number they can give each day.
 
We handle that here (and on our personal sites) via standard moderation.

I don't see why the majority should be punished for the very small minority.
It's not punishing the small minority if they don't do more than 25 likes in a 24-hour period, but more like 10. It's mainly for those who choose to abuse it.

Turning the reactions off just seems like it would bring more problems than limiting it. 🤷‍♂️ Although, like Sim said, even making an individual be cut-off of reactions instead of a group would be something I would use.
 
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.
I love this and look forward to using it when the forum I'm on most switches to 2.1!
 
There's surely people not abusing the system that exceed even the abusers. I used to have limits on a software and found I hit them legitimately.

You may want to suggest something like, in the ban options, add the option to temporarily move to a group. This way, you could remove certain permissions from that group (Reactions), and put them in it for 24 hours, etc.
 
That example I mentioned for one of my sites where there are several people who like things literally 10x more than anyone else - I've analysed who they are giving likes to and there doesn't seem to be any pattern or signs of abuse - they simply like things far too much. I've tried explaining that liking things too much is like making every day your birthday - it's no longer special if you simply like everything.

Depends on how you interpret "like". For my users it can mean "cool", "I agree", "well said even if I don't agree" and so on. We don't get to decide what "Like" means, the users do. Which is why Reactions was one of the new features that immediately caught my eye. We've had users requesting it for a while. Adds some needed nuance that a simple "Like" lacks.
 
We have found in XF 2.1 via admincp > appearance > style properties > miscellaneous we can toggle a reaction summary to be reflected on the forum listings as shown:

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However, this is a summary of only the first post. Is it possible to summarize likes from the thread?
 
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