When to ❤ something?

[decentralion]

As of the change to -minted cred, have acquired a new significance on Discourse.

On another thread, @s_ben surfaced concerns that this is changing how we :

@s_ben

one issue I’ve been wanting to raise is the possibility that s on Discourse have become too weighty, too sparse. Many of my posts are getting 0 s now.

I propose we establish shared expectations about what posts are “worth” a heart.

Here’s the guideline I’ve been experimentally applying.

I will a topic if it

• The post is a part of a meaningful discussion
• The post is on-topic and contributing to that discussion
• The post is respectful and reasonably concise (i.e. not a rambling stream-of-consciousness)

Curious to hear others’ thoughts, and what your personal “what-to-” philosophies are.

[1GLENCo]

I frequently click the on a post just to at least let the writer know that I’ve read it, even if I don’t truly whatever it was they wrote. If there were an (or a in some cases), I’d click those instead. Often times it’s more meaningful to just acknowledge the writer with any kind of feedback and the works well enough to garner a click from me, fwiw.

I’m saying this in a general social media sense. Discourse probably has a deeper meaning, especially if there’s cred involved. Sorry that I haven’t learned the ropes around here yet. In any case, I’m clicking on the for your post after I send this (because I do indeed feel it’s a -worthy discussion).

[wchargin]

Three people, three practices!

I use s very sparingly on persistent platforms like Discourse. Without looking at my profile, I can tell you with high confidence that I have ed exactly three posts. I can tell you which posts they were (and in what order), and why I chose to each one: the reasons are all different.

Off the top of my head, I didn’t know what my stats for GitHub were. But I wrote a simple query to find out*, and it looks like I’ve ed five posts, which seems proportionally commensurate.

On Discord, my reactions flow more freely, precisely because they are more ephemeral.

I think that it’s important to recognize that there is such a diversity of practice here. This thread hasn’t come close to covering everyone’s usage patterns, and already we see a bunch of variance. It will be tricky to try to find a “one size fits all” semantics for the interpretation of reactions, yet I suspect that it’s important that we meet people where they are. If we design our own platform for SourceCred, we can tweak the UX endlessly, but as long as the button is labeled “”, people are going to come in with preconceptions, and they will use the button how they please.

So—

@1GLENCo

Sorry that I haven’t learned the ropes around here yet

—don’t apologize! Your opinion is valid.

* The way to my :heart:

The expressiveness of the GraphQL-to-SQL mirror really shines here—you can’t express this in a GraphQL query because it needs to traverse edges backward, but it’s trivial in SQL:

-- What GitHub posts has @wchargin :heart:ed?
SELECT reactable_url.value AS url
FROM objects AS reactions
JOIN primitives AS reaction_primitives
    ON reactions.id = reaction_primitives.object_id
    AND reactions.typename = 'Reaction'
    AND reaction_primitives.fieldname = 'content'
    AND reaction_primitives.value = '"HEART"'
JOIN links AS reaction_user
    ON reactions.id = reaction_user.parent_id
    AND reaction_user.fieldname = 'user'
JOIN primitives AS user_primitives
    ON reaction_user.child_id = user_primitives.object_id
    AND user_primitives.fieldname = 'login'
    AND user_primitives.value = '"wchargin"'
JOIN connection_entries AS reaction_parent_entry
    ON reaction_parent_entry.child_id = reactions.id
JOIN connections AS reactable_cxn
    ON reactable_cxn.rowid = reaction_parent_entry.connection_id
JOIN primitives AS reactable_url
    ON reactable_cxn.object_id = reactable_url.object_id
    AND reactable_url.fieldname = 'url'
;

I think that at last I may have gotten the SQL schema right. I also think that I may have gotten the indices right: the query plan here users only indexed searches except for the reaction_parent_id lookup, which is reasonable because reverse-edge searches aren’t something that we actually care about in production SourceCred.

[s_ben]

This is super interesting. While it seems the SourceCred community is very value-aligned, there appears to be a lot of diversity in perspectives and behaviors emerging.

I’m probably the least discriminating here…I’ll if:

• (Post adds value to the discussion) AND (post is roughly better than average)

OR

• (Post adds value to the discussion) AND (post is from a new person (come on in!))

In the beginning of the CredSperiment, I found myself just using s like I would on social media, fairly liberally and somewhat conversationally. I felt kinda conflicted about this, because while I liked the idea of just using SourceCred as I would anything else, and having magical internet money come to me, I wondered if that was shirking my responsibility to think of the consequences of s. Since the weight change and adoption of like-minted Cred, and watching s become more scarcely used by others, I’ve become more discriminating. My criteria I would say is roughly the same as before, but the threshold for what is valuable enough to is higher.

[mzargham]

@s_ben

In the beginning of the CredSperiment, I found myself just using s like I would on social media, fairly liberally and somewhat conversationally. I felt kinda conflicted about this, because while I liked the idea of just using SourceCred as I would anything else, and having magical internet money come to me, I wondered if that was shirking my responsibility to think of the consequences of s. Since the weight change and adoption of like-minted Cred, and watching s become more scarcely used by others, I’ve become more discriminating. My criteria I would say is roughly the same as before, but the threshold for what is valuable enough to is higher.

Concur.

[Jolie_Ze]

It’s definitely a learning curve. As a newbie I can feel my habits shifting on how I emoji react in Discord and how I heart react in Discourse. I feel highly aware of it. In the middle of my learning I had this small mental vertigo of, “oh fuck I’m doing this wrong and there is meaning I didn’t know I was making and participating in” to a, “and now I know how to use this tool better” attitude.

[LB]

Love this topic not necessarily for pinning down the reaction meaning RN, but for surfacing the discussion about how folks are interpreting 's and their understanding of the Cred that comes with it.

The personal framework I’ve created over time in this space is that I’ll give a to any Discourse Topic (first post) or reply (additional posts) that I feel:

• Improves the conversation (meta or regional)
• Expresses things I also feel and would have needed to write out if they hadn’t
• Changes or broadens my perspective about something
• Inspires continued useful thinking in me
• Is relevant to me and the things I’m working on (eg I don’t heart a lot of topics about economics, especially if they’re difficult for me to understand or relate to my existing work/ideas)

Basically with my 's I’m trying to say “yes; this moved us/me forward, I’m glad you wrote it, and I want to see more of this because it’s valuable in my eyes.” Like maybe a props/boost hybrid that is lower stakes.

I don’t give them for anything I either didn’t read, or didn’t understand, or didn’t care about.

[panchomiguel]

I follow pretty closely to @LB 's usage. I’m not super stingy with the hearts. If I see a post I find valuable, I heart it. I also don’t worry too much about it being “equitable”, or stress about it too much. Typically I just go with my first gut reaction about whether to heart or not.

I will say that It would be nice if we could split reactions away from purely hearts (eyes and thumbs down would be nice), but being heart-generous in favor of generally positive contributions is my way of using the heart.