Should we add a "like" feature to the forum?

[Anapan]

My thoughts:
Our forum doesn't have a lot of interaction, but it is not because our members can't interact, only that they don't.
IMO, that's not a detriment, only that our members and audience do not see a need to continue conversations with answers (well, that's a dead forum in a nutshell, and ours shouldn't be that).
Corollary argument could be said that a member has said too much and deters others from posting.
Both maybe possible at the same time, but the addition of a like/dislike will not add any better discourse, only cause less interaction and start a popularity contest.
Sorry guys, I don't think this plugin will get our forum out of the fact that is is a forum and not social media. Making the discourse were more "Like" / "Dislike" would not improve interaction.
Despite my opinion, I don't see any real negative either. It will not bring in new members, and it will not affect old posts except to maybe bring old post forward and possibly make them relevant again. If consensus is to press the big red button, I'm not gonna be the guy that yells "No!". There's backups of the forum database, right?

[Golgo 14]

I think the "like" feature is pretty useful on AtariAge and could liven things up a bit here.

There are days-long stretches here where you might think you're the only one still looking at the forum. But people are here as evidenced by a flurry of posts in rapid succession whenever REPO posts something that gets everyone's goat

[o.pwuaioc]

I agree with Anapan. "Like / Dislike" feels far too much like Facebook-driven social media that I immediately hate it.

On the other hand, Ziggy's point about helpful threads that everyone reads but no one posts could be something.

A super limited implementation could be a "helpful" button instead of a "like" one.

[Ziggy]

But there would be no dislike. Only like. Or thumbs up, or whatever you wanna call it. Nintendo's Miiverse called it "Yeah!"

Nick found three existing plugins that look like they're likes without a dislike option. In fact, one had "like" and "love" which I think is interesting.

And there would be no up/downvoting, or tallying likes per user like a rep system, or anything like that. It would solely be on a per post basis.

O.p - you have the right idea with a "helpful" button. We could call it whatever we want, really. Maybe "thanks" or something. But yeah, I think it would help for those types of threads.

Or not just guides/reviews, but any thread really. For example, I have two threads that I'm using to sort of chronicle the build of retro computers. They seem like they might be mildly popular. They both have 3-4k views, and they get a few hundred more views every time I post an update. But what does that actually mean? It takes some time to upload the pics and type everything up. It would be nice to know if it's actually well received or if I'm wasting my time. And yeah, without many replies and a lack of thumbs up or whatever, it often feels like I'm talking to static. Which quite honestly keeps me from posting more stuff like this.

I use my own threads as example, but I see plenty of other people post threads that get little to no replies. I'm on mobile right now, so I cannot site specific examples.

And don't get me wrong, I am in no way advocating that we try and turn the forums into Facebook, Twitter or Reddit.

[opa]

I would still like a 'like' or 'thanks'.

I don't think that makes the forum a twitter or whatever.

[marurun]

It occurs to me there are a lot of changes we could make that would make these forums easier and simpler to use, especially given the change in traffic. For example, we could probably collapse most of our sub forums into just a few different sub forums and dramatically reduce the complexity of this place. Nobody wants to post in a vacuum, and with posting traffic low having far fewer different “spaces” to post in would probably encourage livelier posting.

“Likes” then also have more value in that simpler environment because they represent not just passive views but more active views. Further, if we really do need more ways to filter, we could consider a tagging system using a small controlled vocabulary of platforms, companies, genres, and post types.

This is all thoughts for further out as it would require some work with plugins and customizations for the latter things, but major sub forum consolidation is something we should consider sooner, really.

Basically, blame Resetera, Insert Credit, and some of the discussion on rpg.net for this train of thought.

[Ziggy]

We had a pretty big thread a few years ago about reorganizing sub forums. I think it's one of those things that could improve the forum, but the chance of it having a negative effect makes it hard to come to terms with.

[marurun]

I just think that all these minute subdivisions are compounding the reduced activity and heightening the perception that this is a desert, even though people are participating. Just not enough to support this large a structure. I think we are at the point where the down sides are rather negligible.

[Ziggy]

I don't disagree. Plenty of people are still reading the forums but only a fraction of them are actually posting. It's hard to say why. Perhaps the multitude of subs does have something to do with it. Is that how many people browse the forums? By clicking through each sub? As oppose to just clicking the Active Topics and seeing what's in there?

[Anapan]

I'm pretty sure it's only active topics off the front page and Google only pointing people's searches to topics that were recently active. I still find the right answer on google search page 2-3 on this forum from a long-gone member, but Google seems to only favor active discussions, even if they're arguments and wrong answers in the end. I'm worried that reorganizing might actually throw people off finding what they were searching for.
On the flip side, reorganizing might make every topic fresh despite necro-bumping entire sub-forums and bring a flood of new members, except I think the spiders have plagiarism filters built-in.