Lots of good responses here, and I think that overall I'm against likes on comments, (especially public-facing ones, which I suspect was never on the table to begin with considering how likes work on posts) but if anything like this is ever implemented, I just wanted to throw out an idea: What if only the OP or people you're replying to could like your comments?
There was a part of me that wanted likes on comments too, at first, but only because I missed being able to quietly acknowledge replies to my posts without having to think of a reply. That, to me, is the only real benefit of likes on comments. So if this was ever implemented, I think it would be best if you could only like comments directed at you specifically, both to avoid facilitating all kinds of unhealthy behavior and also to just avoid notification spam -- I don't really care if anyone likes my comments other than whoever I was talking to, and an inbox full of "random user liked your comment!" sounds annoying.
At the same time though, I also share the concern that adding an ability to like comments might make people feel like they're expected or obligated to like comments on their posts, or that adding likes might make commenters feel worse if their comment goes unacknowledged, so I can't help but wonder whether likes on comments in any form would introduce more problems than it solves. I guess I only ask that if this is ever implemented that it's implemented thoughtfully. Opt-in might be the way to go.
i think reading other people's responses here may be changing my stance lol. i think if you did implement comment likes... the best middle-groundy way to do it would probably be to have them be the same as post likes, which i like a lot. no public facing counts or record of who likes the thing, just a private notif. but it definitely does still kind of add another venue for potential passive aggressiveness/anxiety/etc. and idk what the solution is for that. there's only so many ways you can mechanically work around something that is essentially kind of a cultural issue, haha.
Notifications can very quickly become unreadable when Likes roll in on a post. I'd love to be able to just hide Likes outright, and save notifications for everything else - I'm way more interested in seeing comments and checking out new followers.
The more I think about this, the more convinced I am that I don't actually want notifications for likes:
The concept of courtesy likes is exhausting and I don't like the way it will end up shaping social interactions on this site. I also think the current notifications page would be a poor fit for it. This reads to me like adding twitter features for the sake of pining for twitter features.
I am especially strongly against any public-facing element of this as I've seen it used for hostile arguments or passive-aggressivity way too many times in the past. If I have to log in and see Like wars the next time there's an argument over the ToS I am going to want to immediately log back out. I would much, MUCH rather incentivize "low quality" +1 comments that can at least facilitate discussion than low-friction metrics-y things like this.
Personally, I personally much prefer the option of a courtesy like to having to manually reply to every comment or else ignore it completely, and I'd much rather other people be able to just give my comment a quick like than make them feel like they need to actually respond or else have no idea whether they even saw it and just keep waiting for a response.
I'm a no on this, I think it gets into insecurity-inducing "politeness like" territory too quickly
i would like to forward my old idea of a circle you can fill in for comments, as distinct from a like. it has no defined meaning but the commenter knows you did it
I'm of two minds on it. A private like system that notifies the commenter both addresses my desire to let people know I saw their reply and appreciate it but don't have much to say and creates an impulse to do so which is not so good.
As far as a visible number of likes on a reply... not really in favor I think. "Popularity" indicators lean back into the engagement-driven nature that leads to a lot of toxic behavior on other social media sites. I'm not sure it would lean that direction on cohost given the generally more anonymous nature of likes but it still feels... iffy
i do miss going "heh" via a like on a tweet, but i used to go without it on forums, and sometimes it does feel like twitter encourages people to fish for likes.
even if the likes were hidden on a comment, and only the commenter saw the like, well, i'm not really sure it captures the vibe i'm looking for. i don't really care too much that a random person reading the thread had a chuckle, i want to know if the person who i'm replying to is going "yep, sure" and nodding along
similarly, i'm not sure how i'd feel about emoji reactions—it feels like transplanting a chat feature—and i've seen how they look on github, it just encourages low effort spectator sport stuff
one possible alternative that i haven't seen here: what if short replies took up much less screen space
e.g i reply with an emoji, or "heh" or "sure" and instead of having a big old forum post, there's a one line reply, with a scaled down avatar, my name, the comment, and the time
I kinda like how freeing it feels to not have any sort of read-receipt system for comments. I get a lot of inane comments on my stuff and I like that there's nothing indicating if I saw a comment, if I like it, dislike, etc. whereas on Twitter I always felt a pressure to Like the comments from my active followers to show that I appreciate that they appreciate my stuff but don't have anything to say. If I ignored a reply, it felt like a snub to them, or that it meant I just didn't see it.
I also like that when people do get into conflicts in the comments there's not this like, spectator sport element of people egging others on by liking the comments of the people they agree with. It just remains an interaction between only those two people and it doesn't emphasize to you that other people might be watching. I feel like I've seen a lot of these conflicts resolve more normally with people coming to shared ground etc. rather than posturing for an audience who is watching them fight.
@jgs
I'd like the ability to "like" comments, in order to let someone know that I appreciate their comment without having to make a comment of my own. I envision this as behaving similarly to likes on posts, in that it would be invisible to everyone but the liker and the commenter.
I could also see some sort of public-facing +1 or upvote system, which would have the added benefit of reducing the number of replies that are just "+1" or otherwise just expressions of agreement. However, I would not want this to become a full Reddit-style voting/ranking system.
77 people like this idea