Forum suggestion: Ease up on that reaction limit

[Echo Weaver]

OK, I'm sure the daily reaction limit on the forum is to avoid harassment, but dang it is a SMALL NUMBER.

I guess I come from an online culture where reactions get thrown around everywhere. I tend to use them every time I think someone makes an interesting point, shares information I didn't know, or tells a sad or happy anecdote. I also like reacting a lot -- I helps people feel seen; it's easy to feel invisible in online spaces.

If we have to have a daily reaction limit, I totally think it could be 2x or 3x what it is now while still being difficult to use for harassment.

And while we're at it, I could totally use a horrified reaction along with the sad reaction. When someone posts about lighting a fire pit and burning down their house, sad doesn't seem quite right....

Edited October 17, 2025 by Echo Weaver

[LadyWYT]

1 hour ago, Echo Weaver said:

And while we're at it, I could totally use a horrified reaction along with the sad reaction.

Or a drifter reaction. Because sometimes wolfbait doesn't quite fit. 

 

1 hour ago, Echo Weaver said:

OK, I'm sure the daily reaction limit on the forum is to avoid harassment, but dang it is a SMALL NUMBER.

My guess is it might be more to prevent point farming, and not just harrassment. As irritating as it is to get sarcastic wolfbaits, they ironically still count towards advancing one's forum rank, which is one reason I don't really bother with wolfbait that much. I'd rather save the emote and give someone else a cookie, than wolfbait obviously low quality content.

[Echo Weaver]

30 minutes ago, LadyWYT said:

Or a drifter reaction. Because sometimes wolfbait doesn't quite fit. 

Oooooh. This is EXACTLY what we need.

30 minutes ago, LadyWYT said:

My guess is it might be more to prevent point farming, and not just harrassment. As irritating as it is to get sarcastic wolfbaits, they ironically still count towards advancing one's forum rank, which is one reason I don't really bother with wolfbait that much. I'd rather save the emote and give someone else a cookie, than wolfbait obviously low quality content.

I feel totally chuffed to have reached Historian, but the truth is that I don't see that much value in poster reputation. I think this is another argument against it. The human impulse is to react to something that generates a reaction, meaning pleasantly inoffensive posts are not going to advance your reputation but trolling is going to make everyone want to click SOMETHING, which is usually wolfbait because nothing else fits. Even I've started using wolfbait to mean, "That post is gonna get you flamed/make the wolves descend upon you," rather than the its original meaning. If it were removed, we'd come up with something else. It's why I see laughing reactions being removed on several forums, which bugs the crap out of me because I want to be able to react to things that are actually funny. Either you switch off to just "like," or you have to face the fact that some reaction is going to get used for, "That post offended me."

ETA: Actually, I wonder if you'd actually be making the forums more civil by just owning up and adding "Disagree." People will generally flock to it for offensive posts because it's the best fit, but it's less inflammatory than sarcastically using a reaction intended for a different purpose. It doesn't fix the reputation problem because disagree is also perfectly useful for civil disagreement.

Edited October 17, 2025 by Echo Weaver
Spelling

[Facethief]

There really should be some way to do a reaction that doesn’t give points, or make it so that you need multi-factor authentication to react with wolf bait.

[LadyWYT]

6 minutes ago, Echo Weaver said:

The human impulse is to react to something that generates a reaction, meaning pleasantly inoffensive posts are not going to advance your reputation but trolling is going to make everyone want to click SOMETHING, which is usually wolfbait because nothing else fits.

Thing is, in this case you can just check the profile of users and note what kind of reactions they tend to get. Outside of the one guy that made it clear he wanted to collect wolfbaits, getting more wolfbaits, confused, or sad reactions than the more positive reactions is usually a pretty good indicator that the user in question has some issues. I'll also note that a user's profile will also track how many comments they've made, and how many solutions they've helped find in the Questions section.

Overall, yeah, it's still just imaginary internet points and high post counts just mean someone talks a lot. However, I wouldn't say that it means nothing overall, especially when there's a high positive reaction count to go with the post count.

10 minutes ago, Echo Weaver said:

ETA: Actually, I wonder if you'd actually be making the forums more civil by just owning up and adding "Disagree." People will generally flock to it for offensive posts because it's the best fit, but it's less inflammatory than sarcastically using a reaction intended for a different purpose. It doesn't fit the reputation problem because disagree is also perfectly useful for civil disagreement.

 

3 minutes ago, Facethief said:

There really should be some way to do a reaction that doesn’t give points, or make it so that you need multi-factor authentication to react with wolf bait.

That might be the better option, really, though I think wolfbait and the like would still get used a lot. As aggravating as they can be sometimes, I don't think removing the "bad" emotes is the answer, or emotes entirely, is the answer. Overall, the system is fairly solid for pushing good content to the forefront, and the bad actors usually become quite noticeable by establishing certain patterns of behavior. And for the really bad actors, that's also why the report button and ignore features exist.

[Echo Weaver]

30 minutes ago, LadyWYT said:

That might be the better option, really, though I think wolfbait and the like would still get used a lot. As aggravating as they can be sometimes, I don't think removing the "bad" emotes is the answer, or emotes entirely, is the answer. Overall, the system is fairly solid for pushing good content to the forefront, and the bad actors usually become quite noticeable by establishing certain patterns of behavior. And for the really bad actors, that's also why the report button and ignore features exist.

36 minutes ago, Facethief said:

There really should be some way to do a reaction that doesn’t give points, or make it so that you need multi-factor authentication to react with wolf bait.

The more I think about it, the more I would encourage an explicit, "Disagre" or even "I was offended by this" reaction -- one that doesn't grant reputation points and gives us a place to put the reactions that we're just not going to be able to stop making. On the surface, it seems like adding negative responses makes the forums more contentious, but most of that contentiousness is going to happen anyway, and not having an outlet just generates more frustration.

I'm sure somebody has studied this .

[Zane Mordien]

I couldn't resist.