Allow for many reaction emojis

[Aramaech]

As it stands now, when you go to react to a post, and you hover over the heart in the lower right to get all the reactions to pop out, they all pop out in a straight line, regardless of how many of them there are. Which sucks. It means if you want to upload a full emoji set for reactions you're limited in the number you can upload by the fact that the reaction select panel doesn't wrap. So really, at most you can get like 10 before it starts looking awful. 

With some custom css I was able to get the behavior I wanted (still trying to get it to work on mobile view) but this type of wrapping really should be the default.

Edited February 14, 2021 by Aramaech

[Jordan Miller]

Hey @Aramaech.  I do think this is a good suggestion! I believe the intention is to have as few as possible to kind of "guide" the member. I personally had about 8-10 reactions at one point on my own forum, and 6 or 7 of them were used less than 1% of the time, so we ended up disabling them. The ones we left, a heart, a thumbs up and a "haha" seem to cover a lot of the bases. BUT I do see the value in wanting to have 100 if you choose, and they align like the screen shot above. 

[Moonbeam]

If you're only looking to use the reactions to add flavor and not as a component for gauging "positive" and "negative" responses to a user's content, I could see this being useful. If the point is to use reactions as a form of social pressure (where the goal is to get positive responses rather than negative), the larger the list of reactions you have, the more you dilute that purpose.

[Morrigan]

The number of reactions doesn't always do that. I have about 13 reactions and they are basically intended for people to voice their opinions. I've had others but I've kept the ones that work.

I made the default reaction something that isn't really a reaction so that people actually took advantage of the other reactions. This is the "I read this" reaction that the point is that its not positive, negative or even really feedback which is how I use my reactions. However, none of my reactions provide negative reputation and the only "negative" one provides no reputation at all.

Going left to right:

• Like
• Agree
• Disagree
• Yeah
• Love
• Thanks
• You're welcome
• Great Idea
• Cheers
• LOL
• Preach it
• Cringe
• I read this

On mobile this sort of sucks in some areas more than others but I've made it work. That said I'd say that some are lesser used (like Great idea and Disagree) but I wouldn't remove them because they all have their place within my community to be helpful. (Great idea is really useful in my Brainstorming and Ideas section for example and Disagree is useful for my conversations sections).

Would I like a little more modular use of it it? Maybe. I sometimes think it would be good to remove disagree from sections that it doesn't quite fit like Brainstorming and ideas or looking for help sections. Agree should probably really only in the same sections as Disagree because "great idea" and "thanks" would probably be better served in the Brainstorming section. The problem for that for me is that Great idea can be used in other sections and still be useful (status messages and conversation threads).

 

Reviewing my list, if I felt like there was no other way (which obviously there is) I could maybe remove 6-7 reactions but I wouldn't feel good about it. Having a more modular or a better display would, I think, could be beneficial. @Jordan Invision

[Aramaech]

On 2/15/2021 at 11:32 AM, Jordan Invision said:

Hey @Aramaech.  I do think this is a good suggestion! I believe the intention is to have as few as possible to kind of "guide" the member. I personally had about 8-10 reactions at one point on my own forum, and 6 or 7 of them were used less than 1% of the time, so we ended up disabling them. The ones we left, a heart, a thumbs up and a "haha" seem to cover a lot of the bases. BUT I do see the value in wanting to have 100 if you choose, and they align like the screen shot above. 

Cool, glad you like! Yea we're trying move away from using reactions to allow people to guide each other, and more just to react in a general sense, just to make it more expressive and interesting, rather than "good / bad". Part of this was removing negative impact on rep, and just having either positive or neutral. I can see where people are coming from who do want to use it as a guide method, but I think adding a little css to allow for this way too could accommodate both approaches, without shorting anyone. And in my experience it was a pretty easy addition to make.

UNNECESSARY EXTRA CONSIDERATION:
For people who are using it as a good/bad guide, and for people who are using it the way I'm describing, also adding the ability for certain reactions to increase or decrease rep by more than one (an optional number, or number between 1-3) would be pretty sweet too. I know in my case there are a few reactions I wouldn't mind allowing 3 rep for earning.

Edited February 17, 2021 by Aramaech

[Joel R]

On 2/14/2021 at 2:27 PM, Aramaech said:

As it stands now, when you go to react to a post, and you hover over the heart in the lower right to get all the reactions to pop out, they all pop out in a straight line, regardless of how many of them there are. Which sucks. It means if you want to upload a full emoji set for reactions you're limited in the number you can upload by the fact that the reaction select panel doesn't wrap. So really, at most you can get like 10 before it starts looking awful. 

With some custom css I was able to get the behavior I wanted (still trying to get it to work on mobile view) but this type of wrapping really should be the default.

I think it would be extremely interesting if you followed up with the community in six months or one year with an analysis of your 26 emojis.  

Were they all used equally and actively? Or were only a handful of emojis used? 

My gut tells me that once you exceed 6 reactions, the marginal benefit of each additional reaction doesn't do a whole lot.  

[Jordan Miller]

On 2/20/2021 at 7:37 PM, Joel R said:

I think it would be extremely interesting if you followed up with the community in six months or one year with an analysis of your 26 emojis.  

Were they all used equally and actively? Or were only a handful of emojis used? 

My gut tells me that once you exceed 6 reactions, the marginal benefit of each additional reaction doesn't do a whole lot.  

My community had ~12 at one point and only 3 were used and the rest were at less than 1% 😆. Not saying it's like that for everyone of course. 

On Invision Community, we removed the "sad" and "confused" reactions because they were extremely underutilized. 

Which reminds me, I'd love to see more green +1s 😂 

[Aramaech]

Consider Discord or Mewe for examples where many many more emojis are used successfully (and all with consistent usage) than what I'm implementing. They both essentially allow the entire available catalog of emojis on the platform to be used as reactions. Hundreds, not dozens. And it works very well. Imo better than what IPS is currently doing, although IPS ability to decide which reactions effect reputation and how would put IPS a step ahead.

A further possibility might even be allowing toggles for individual "groups" of custom / uploaded emojis that appear in the CKEditor to be accessible as reactions.

Edited February 27, 2021 by Aramaech

[Morrigan]

I figured I'd circle back to this @Jordan Invision and show you just my personal reactions given/received on my site:

The one thing I want to point out is that the "I read this" is the most used" but not because its used anymore but what I changed the likes Pre multi-reactions. That reaction is there to primarily keep people from defaulting to the "like" reaction and actually persuade them to use the other reactions. Yes, some are lesser used, as you can see there, but in general they are regularly used reactions and all have a purpose on my site.

[Jordan Miller]

20 hours ago, Morrigan said:

I figured I'd circle back to this @Jordan Invision and show you just my personal reactions given/received on my site:

The one thing I want to point out is that the "I read this" is the most used" but not because its used anymore but what I changed the likes Pre multi-reactions. That reaction is there to primarily keep people from defaulting to the "like" reaction and actually persuade them to use the other reactions. Yes, some are lesser used, as you can see there, but in general they are regularly used reactions and all have a purpose on my site.

Appreciate you circling back. Just so I'm clear, you're looking to have the wrapping be default in IC versus applying custom CSS? 

[Morrigan]

That would be nice. I mean, as it stands, it works but I can't tell you how many times I mouse over that icon to choose a reaction and then have to do it again because my mouse moved just above the line as I went to the left (or right). Its worse on the more mini versions like in Status Updates because the area is about half of what it is on a post.

I think it will also make things better for end users to be able to access ones that are further away faster. On mobile it would reduce on the need to scroll as well as thumb reach.

In a way I feel penalized because I want to give my members the ability to express themselves.

 

[Yamamura]

On 3/14/2021 at 9:25 PM, Morrigan said:

show you just my personal reactions given/received on my site:

Edited March 15, 2021 by Takohashi

[xdrox]

On 2/20/2021 at 10:37 PM, Joel R said:

My gut tells me that once you exceed 6 reactions, the marginal benefit of each additional reaction doesn't do a whole lot.  

If the difference between emojis is too subtle, yes it's not worth adding more.

Nine reaction emojis on my board. I have found half of them on Google. The other half, I made them myself.

From left to right :

- ARGHHH!!!
- Meh.
- ...
- Malaise. (Cringe.)
- Navré... (Sorry...)
- QU-QUOI?! (WH-WHAT?!)
- HAHAHA!
- J'ADORE! (I LOVE!)
- J'aime! (I like!)

 

The angry one is so agressive it has barely been used serioulsy, mostly for irony. The ''Meh'' () isn't really used either, it makes the giver looks grumpy and it was kinda the point.

All the other ones are used regularly. My community is known for its harshness and those emojis fit the overall ambiance.

I've created many other original emojis too, come take a look : depotoir.ca

Edited March 25, 2021 by xdrox

[Aramaech]

I feel compelled to reiterate that adding this functionality would not detract from or even change the existing functionality at all, in any way.