Admin Note: Like Buttons!
Ok so I played around with various “like” and “dislike” buttons, per some requests. This has come up from time to time, so I found a rather flexible solution. We now have like/dislike buttons on each comment. These are anonymous, public and limited to one vote per person (as much as technically possible).
Share your thoughts here if you want. Do you like the like button? Do you dislike the dislike button? Should we add a “die heretic” button? (just kidding…)
I like the feature, the only thing is that it adds extra load time to a given page.
My “extra load time” seems to be only a split second on my PC.
Great feature, Brian.
Speaking for myself, I don’t think I will be using the “dislike” button very much. If I’m going to express displeasure over something that a person has written, I think I owe it to that person to explain why.
For all of our Amish readers, maybe we can provide safety pins instead of buttons.
First the Armenians and now the Amish. Who’s next, the poor Scythians? lol
I’m not really a fan of the like/dislike buttons. But this is an intriguing idea, and I’d like to see how it plays out. Maybe some anonymous readers will feel more comfortable joining in conversations with the buttons?
Rarely is there any comment that I 100% like (except for mine of course :) And rarely is there any comment that I 100% dislike. So for me “like” mean “I generally appreciate the essence of the comment.” And dislike means “I generally don’t like the essence of the comment.” Maybe for others it is based on the tone.
We do have the option of renaming the buttons and also adding text that pops up to explain what each means.
Thanks, Brian! I like both the Like and the Dislike buttons. Like Joe (and I do like him too!), it is not likely that I will click the Dislike button much, if at all, and if I do I would explain why I dislike it.
Brian, Can you create these same Like and Dislike buttons for the article itself? I am wondering what you guys think of doing this?
Some explanation perhaps is always good to express why one likes or dislikes a particular article and/or comment.
Sure Ben I can turn on the buttons easily on articles. I am testing this on mobile and it all works fine. All suggestions are welcome!
So it seems our readers like the “like” buttons. We’ve had 136 “likes” and 15 “dislikes” clicked in just a few days.
Remember, these are anonymous buttons, so no statistics revealing your identity are tracked. We do pay for a service that tracks the statistics of which comments and articles are liked and disliked.
Also note that the service provides rather robust blocking mechanisms to prevent over-voting by one person. So the numbers may not update instantly.
I think we may need to add some new policies, such as “We suggest you don’t always “like” your own post or comments” and “Please try to add a comment explaining what you do or don’t like.” and “Contributors and commenters should not take “likes/dislikes” too personally, but see the buttons as a general guide as to how your thoughts were received.”
Thoughts? Likes? Dislikes?
And please send me a copy of any email you recieve from inside ubf asking people to “dislike” anything perceived as being anti-ubf here on this website. I have proof that such emails have been sent out among ubf leaders to try and remove internet content they don’t like.
Hey everyone, the Like/Dislike buttons are disabled. The plugin for this was charging way too much for continued use. If someone has a better button plugin, please share it here! –Thanks, briank.
Admin update: I removed the flag counter plugin from ubfriends, as well as my own priestlynation blog. This plugin was causing too much of a slowdown on the website. Stats are still tracked however. –BrianK