# reactions: using limited emoji reactions for feedback can be useful
this post was inspired by https://www.mcmillen.dev/blog/20210721-downvotes-considered-harmful.html. i like the idea in that post and here i'll just think loudly how to implement it in general.
more and more websites allow users to "emoji react" to the main content. for a nice example see a random popular github issue like https://github.com/golang/go/issues/15292. observe how most comments have some emoji reactions under them.
for a long time i didn't really like this idea. but i spent some time thinking about this and i think this can be pretty useful if done well. in this post i'll explore what features would make this a useful feature for me.
# emojis
but first let me add a disclaimer that i hate it when people communicate in pure emojis. to me it's like talking in ancient hieroglyphs. and if you encounter a hieroglyph you have never seen before then it can be pretty hard to look up what it means.
suppose you walk along a street and there's a red table saying this:
DISALLOWED: 🥨 🐶 🛼 🪅
you can sort of figure out what the first 3 means: no eating, no pets, no rollerskates. but what does the last one mean? and then you try to call your partner to ask what the 4th symbol means, how do you verbalize your question? unless you know that the author meant toys, you have hard time figuring out the meaning just from the picture.
words wouldn't have this problem:
DISALLOWED: eating, pets, rollerskates, toys.
i admit, i'm heavily biased here: i think verbally. i have to mentally verbalize or write things down in order to "think" and to solve problems. i can't think in pictures.
but there are people for whom pictures are easier. in that case there is an easy compromise: just display both.
DISALLOWED: 🥨(eating), 🐶(pets), 🛼(rollerskates), 🪅(toys)
easy peasy. and on user interfaces where there's little space, let me hover over the icon and the meaning should appear in a tooltip.
and i haven't even talked about the case where an emoji have completely different (sometimes opposite) meaning in different cultures. communicating with emojis across cultures without a reference to the meaning is very hard. or when corporations update the emoji pictures and retroactively change the meaning of past messages in subtle ways for better or worse.
tooltips were heavily used in early user interfaces such as in microsoft windows and microsoft office. i bet one wouldn't be able to figure out what each icon meant without the descriptions:
most emojis are just as cryptic for me. click on the picture to toggle the descriptions. in case of the above tool icons a full description was displayed in a tooltip if you hovered over the icon. and in menus you could see both the icon and the description to help build the mental association. once you familiarized yourself with a tool and its icon, you could comfortably use it from the toolbar. the toolbar was scary at first but things remained discoverable.
another nice example is this: https://github.com/erikthedeveloper/code-review-emoji-guide. here every emoji is well explained and with such guide in mind, i think using those emojis in communication is fine. to be fair, i'm not yet sure i'd like to see such emojis in my reviews yet. but if it's a must then it should be done with a limited set of icons and a guide to the icons.
the other big issue i have is that they are hard to type, usually require special tooling to enter them. i can't simply type them easily with a qwerty keyboard as i do words. well, some systems might allow me to type :thumbsup: and have a thumbs up emoji appear when presented to the user. if it's well accepted that emojis are always represented with english letters in the raw source, then maybe i can make peace with them. but i'm a bit sad that we are trending to revert the super useful invention of the alphabet to cavemen-like pictographic communication. are letters that hard to use? i'm sure i'm in the minority here and i should just move on (even if it feels going backwards).
so anyway, my point is that using pictures in communication is acceptable only as long as they paired with a written explanation that can be easily accessed. in that github example i don't see such explanations for the the various emojis. i don't know what it means when someone reacts with "rocket" to a comment. therefore i don't like that implementation. if you create an emoji reaction system, then create a guide describing how and when to use the various emojis.
# upvoting
all right but what's the case for such emoji reactions?
it's very common on mailing lists and on simple bug trackers that there's a long thread where people add a simple "+1" comment on its own. this is meant to signal that the given user also has the same problem and would like to see the issue fixed.
this is useful information. but at the same time it's very spammy and doesn't add much value to the thread itself.
i think it is efficient to have a dedicated +1 button to simply track the affected people without the spam. and then you can use this aggregated counter to determine what are the most important bugs to fix.
some projects explicitly call this out: https://go.dev/wiki/NoPlusOne.
"like" is similar. you can "like" a post or a video and then the website can use this information to compute the most popular posts.
so far so good.
# downvoting
+1 and like on its own is not enough because it cannot express disapproval. seeing the dislikes for an item is also very useful signal. in the issuetracker example maybe some people consider some bugs as a feature and don't want the bug fixed (cue https://xkcd.com/1172). then it's only fair that people can downvote such bugs.
once you have upvotes and downvotes and they can be trusted, then i can use that information to make decisions. if i'm in the mood for some funny relaxing videos then i can avoid low quality clickbait videos by avoiding downvoted videos. or if i'm a creator myself, i can use this feedback to see if people like or don't like my content.
for an example see github issues. it allows sorting by emoji reactions, see the sort dropdown on the right. example: https://github.com/golang/go/issues?q=is%3Aissue+is%3Aopen+sort%3Areactions-%2B1-desc. check out other emojis as well, such as thumbs down, tada, rocket, etc. unfortunately this emoji set is pretty bad but more on emoji selection later.
unfortunately nowadays there's a trend towards removing or hiding negative feedback. mostly because some people don't use such tools constructively. they use it to harass people, e.g. dislike every post a person makes regardless of content.
then the creator is left wondering why their post has so many negative votes. they have all this negative feedback with no explanation and it makes them feel bad. solution? remove the possibility to react negatively, right?
that's not the right solution. the problem is not that people feel bad but rather content creators can't know why something was downvoted. this hints to an alternative solution: let the downvoters tell why they are downvoting something. a simple one-click "-1" or "dislike" button is not enough. make it at least two-click!
# demo
i've cobbled together some html to show what i have in mind in broad terms. you need javascript enabled to see the demo below. let's take a twitter-like post where people can emoji react to.
you can upvote and downvote a post. the score of the post is then upvotes - downvotes. it's displayed as the first thing right after the post. by default it's +13 because there are 25 upvotes and 12 downvotes. (the exact scoring algorithm doesn't matter for this discussion, it's just an example.)
next to the score is a thumbs up button. you want to simply upvote a post? go ahead and push that button. upvoting a post only needs one click. (really, go ahead, it's just a demo.)
however to downvote you need to press the 3-dot button. it presents you a more complex form. you can still simply click "dislike". but you will get other very common reasons for disliking: "duplicate content", "inaccurate". clicking those would still count as a downvote but the creator and other users will understand better why people don't like something.
but often the predetermined categories don't express all the nuance why someone doesn't like something. those people can add a more detailed comment into the "comment" text box. a sample of those comments is then showed in the feedback form. then the creator and also other users can have an even better understanding why others like or don't like something. try entering something in the box after selecting a reaction to see how the form changes. (in my @/ffpoll post i advocate for similar free form comment box for polls too.)
a similar mechanism can be used for flagging post for moderators, see the remove row. moderators can prioritize their moderation queue more efficiently based on the signals why something was flagged.
here i categorized the reactions into 3 broad categories: upvotes, downvotes, removal requests (moderation request). assigned 3 reactions to each category. maybe it makes sense to have 4 for each category but not more than that because then the interface can get overwhelming.
i keep the generic dislike reaction. but if people still complain about unexplained dislikes then the form can be further tweaked. replace "dislike" with "other" and require for that option a comment. then the creator can simply ignore the "other" reactions with clear conscience if they don't contain a meaningful comment. or such meaningless comments could be even flagged for removal (see the red flag if you hover or touch a comment).
i propose that even upvoting has multiple reaction options. suppose a disaster happens and someone makes a tweet about the event. some people feel weird to "like" such tweets. so in that case people can react with "hug" (or something similar) and still upvote the tweet to popularize it.
select the emojis for the user to choose from carefully. make sure they represent the most popular orthogonal reactions. the more difference is between them, the more useful the data will become. i've picked the demo's 9 emojis without mouch thought. in a real service this would need some research.
the comment that can be attached to the reaction is limited to 120 characters. it's meant to add a short explanation for the reaction. it's not meant for discussion. for discussion the user should be able to reply to the post properly. discussion responses also create a notification for the poster. reactions shouldn't.
# moderation
the 3 reactions for the removal requests are especially handy for moderators. if multiple users mark a post as obsolete, then the post can be collapsed and greyed out but still accessible in general. it's meant to hide duplicate posts and other irrelevant but otherwise fine posts. moderators can then undo this if such action was inappropriate.
if multiple users mark a post as "inappropriate" then the system can automatically unlist the post without moderation intervention. remove the usernames in unlisted posts just to ensure people cannot go witch hunting right away. then later a moderator can make the decision to completely delete the post if it's truly inappropriate. stackoverflow uses such community based moderation. if 6 users flag a post as spam or rude, it gets locked: https://stackoverflow.com/help/privileges/flag-posts. also note how flagging requires the reporter to select why something is flagged. the idea is very similar to what i describe here.
(sidenote: in general i like stackoverflow's approach to moderation. from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39425274: "the only thing that scales with the community is the community".)
if a user marks a post as sensitive, the post would be made immediately unavailable. this is meant for posts that unintentionally contained sensitive data such as phone numbers or addresses. given the grave effect of this action, this reaction wouldn't be available to everyone but only for trusted users. or users who went through some training material explaining the button. and any misuse would result in temporary bans if needed. such bans should be scary enough if signing up to the service is hard per @/signups.
# anonymity
should the reactions be anonymous or public? in the github instance i've linked above it's public, you can see the list of usernames for each reaction type if you hover over the reaction with the mouse.
i'm not fully sure about this but i think making the votes anonymous is better. it might allow for meaner comments. but at the same time the creator will see more honest feedback.
e.g. you might want to avoid giving a negative reaction to a friend to avoid souring the relationship. but if it's anonymous, you would feel more free to give a honest reaction.
and as for mean comments: users should be able to flag the individual free-form comments for moderation. and then mean users can be tempbanned to cool down a bit.
it's not a hard rule though. in some cases it makes more sense to have the names associated. e.g. in technical discussions where you might want to use such feedback to guide decisions and want accountability. but any way you choose, make who can access this data clear enough for the users.
# update rate
avoid updating the scores in real time. some people would be obsessively reloading their post to see the feedback streaming in real time. the system should not encourage such obsessions.
update the stats only every hour or two. this also makes the system easier to implement and cache. no need to build super efficient realtime data aggregation systems.
and make sure if i react, there's at least 1 hour before my reaction appears in the stats. so if i react at 13:58, the 14:00's update won't contain my vote, only the 15:00 one will. this way it avoids the edge case where someone shares a post and then 5 minutes later they can check on the reactions and deduce how certain people reacted even in an anonymous feedback system.
# creativity loss
there's another subtle downside to allowing reactions. people start craving the positive feedback. so if a post doesn't generate a lot of positive reactions, the creators will revert to content that does generate lot of reactions. this is often easier to consume, lower quality content. the creator will lose its unique voice. in other words there is a loss of originality and authenticity in the process.
but this effect has to be counterweighted with the fact how useful seeing such feedback on content is. i'm super annoyed that whenever i look for movie trailers on youtube and i get all these "concept" fake trailers. the annoyance comes from the fact that such trailers are often not clearly labeled. e.g. the concept bit is the last word in a very long title. they are clickbait so they get lot of views. then the channels keep churning them out which then spams the search results.
i'm not against creators creating them but they should be clearly marked as such. if not, then users could tag such videos with the "inaccurate" reaction. and then the search could allow me to filter out "inaccurate" videos. that would be nice.
overall i think the benefits outweigh the drawbacks so i think it's worth having this system.
# reviews
i think such feedback system could be used for reviews too instead of the 5 or 10 scale systems that is common today. https://apenwarr.ca/log/20231204 (NPS, the good parts) is a good article explaining all the downsides of such scales.
not giving the full score to a gig worker (such as uber driver or delivery person) in a review could result in the worker losing their job. at that point the review system loses its value because most people don't want to mess up other's life for a small mistake. the reviews are then not fully honest.
instead just boil down the feedback into two "overall positive" and "overall negative" categories. and from those let people choose a sub-reaction that best describes their experience.
in case of videogames (because that's what i'm most familiar with) you could have this:
the reviewers then would need to decide whether their feeling about a game is overall positive or negative. and then they would need to choose the sub-category that most closely matches their feeling.
when comparing game a vs game b and you see that the first has score 7 and the latter has score 8, does that really give you good information? those scores are super subjective. but when i see that game a's review is "good gameplay" vs game b's is "good story" then i can compare games already. i might opt for the former because gameplay is what i want from games. i'd look for movies or tv shows if i want good stories anyway.
another way to approach this is to allow reviewers pick multiple reactions, not just one. so a game could be marked as "good gameplay, good story" but also as "short, buggy". in a 5 scale rating system that would mean a 3 but in this detailed system i get a much better understanding what to expect from this small structured piece of information.
such multi-option could be allowed for the emoji reactions too but i'm a bit wary of it because it might be a bit too complex to use and reason about.
# summary
to summarize my thoughts: emoji reactions (and review systems) are currently a bit fluffy and don't give much useful information for users. but with some tweaks and in exchange for a little bit of complexity these could be turned into super useful data. i hope various systems will slowly pick up such changes in the future.
published on 2024-05-13, last modified on 2024-09-23
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