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> emoji reactions (yes they really are useful) Fun, sure, but useful? Ehh...I dunno. It seems like you have some specific use in mind and I'm curious, so if

> emoji reactions (yes they really are useful) Fun, sure, but useful? Ehh...I dunno. It seems like you have some specific use in mind and I'm curious, so if you don't mind me asking, what do you use them for?

jononor 8y ago
In the Slacks I frequent they are often used for a ACK/+1 without creating the noise and interruption (from notifications) that a new message in a channel or thread would give. Also they can be used for quick votes. Github signal/noise has increased significantly from emoji reactions reducing all the 'me too' comments.
bcbrown 8y ago
Ad-hoc polls, for one. Also useful for quietly acknowledging a message without sending a noisy notification. If I report an update to a supervisor during a production incident I'd rather get thank-you reaction then a reply that triggers a notification.
zck 8y ago
They're useful to see support of a message, without requiring the responder to say "I agree with $MESSAGE_FROM_SOME_TIME_AGO". This is both useful for weeding out mostly-pointless "I agree" statements, and for encouraging people who would not otherwise send support to do so. Compare this, without emojis: user1: I think we should try $THING. user2: Yes, that's useful. user3: But what about $OTHER_THING? user4: I agree. user3: See, $USER4 agrees with me. user1: $OTHER_THING is too pricy for us right now. user4: No, I was typing at the same time. I agree we should try $THING. user5: $OTHER_THING is my preference! user6: I've used $THING before and loved it! to this, with emojis: user1: I think we should try $THING. (5 :+1: emojis) user3: But what about $OTHER_THING? (1 :+1: emoji) user1: $OTHER_THING is too pricy for us right now. user6: I've used $THING before and loved it! Note that in my example, people were more chatty than they normally were, but not everyone who responded with an emoji in the emoji version even responded with a message in the no-emoji version.
- u801e 8y ago
  > They're useful to see support of a message, without requiring the responder to say "I agree with $MESSAGE_FROM_SOME_TIME_AGO". Messages on this websites have a number of points associated with them based on the number of upvotes and downvotes they get (if any). But we can't directly see the number of points a particular post has (though we can indirectly infer it by how it's sorted compared to its sibling messages and whether the text is grey rather than black). But, even without this information, the vast majority of posts and responses are informative and have some substance. For example, I didn't just post a 2 word response to your post saying "I disagree". Forums that didn't have voting or emoji reaction support didn't have problems with "me too" posts. Neither did usenet.
  - _asummers 8y ago
    As a counter to that, GitHub had a very bad problem with that before they added emojis to issues/PRs. There were hundreds and hundreds of issues with countless "I agree" messages across major projects.
    - u801e 8y ago
      In that case, some moderation (manual or through automated tools) could be used to address the issue. On that note, I noticed that my original post was downvoted. I personally think that it would be more useful if the person who downvoted it had posted a reply instead and detailed the reasons they disagreed with what I posted earlier (like you did). The latter contributes to the discussion. The former doesn't really provide any useful information other than someone out there disagrees with me and I have no insight as to why.
city41 8y ago
One example is we have an integration that posts a task that needs attention. I put the construction worker emoji to indicated it’s being handled then replaced it with the check mark emoji once complete.

jononor 8y ago

In the Slacks I frequent they are often used for a ACK/+1 without creating the noise and interruption (from notifications) that a new message in a channel or thread would give. Also they can be used for quick votes. Github signal/noise has increased significantly from emoji reactions reducing all the 'me too' comments.

bcbrown 8y ago

Ad-hoc polls, for one. Also useful for quietly acknowledging a message without sending a noisy notification. If I report an update to a supervisor during a production incident I'd rather get thank-you reaction then a reply that triggers a notification.

zck 8y ago

They're useful to see support of a message, without requiring the responder to say "I agree with $MESSAGE_FROM_SOME_TIME_AGO". This is both useful for weeding out mostly-pointless "I agree" statements, and for encouraging people who would not otherwise send support to do so. Compare this, without emojis: user1: I think we should try $THING. user2: Yes, that's useful. user3: But what about $OTHER_THING? user4: I agree. user3: See, $USER4 agrees with me. user1: $OTHER_THING is too pricy for us right now. user4: No, I was typing at the same time. I agree we should try $THING. user5: $OTHER_THING is my preference! user6: I've used $THING before and loved it! to this, with emojis: user1: I think we should try $THING. (5 :+1: emojis) user3: But what about $OTHER_THING? (1 :+1: emoji) user1: $OTHER_THING is too pricy for us right now. user6: I've used $THING before and loved it! Note that in my example, people were more chatty than they normally were, but not everyone who responded with an emoji in the emoji version even responded with a message in the no-emoji version.

u801e 8y ago
> They're useful to see support of a message, without requiring the responder to say "I agree with $MESSAGE_FROM_SOME_TIME_AGO". Messages on this websites have a number of points associated with them based on the number of upvotes and downvotes they get (if any). But we can't directly see the number of points a particular post has (though we can indirectly infer it by how it's sorted compared to its sibling messages and whether the text is grey rather than black). But, even without this information, the vast majority of posts and responses are informative and have some substance. For example, I didn't just post a 2 word response to your post saying "I disagree". Forums that didn't have voting or emoji reaction support didn't have problems with "me too" posts. Neither did usenet.
- _asummers 8y ago
  As a counter to that, GitHub had a very bad problem with that before they added emojis to issues/PRs. There were hundreds and hundreds of issues with countless "I agree" messages across major projects.
  - u801e 8y ago
    In that case, some moderation (manual or through automated tools) could be used to address the issue. On that note, I noticed that my original post was downvoted. I personally think that it would be more useful if the person who downvoted it had posted a reply instead and detailed the reasons they disagreed with what I posted earlier (like you did). The latter contributes to the discussion. The former doesn't really provide any useful information other than someone out there disagrees with me and I have no insight as to why.

city41 8y ago

One example is we have an integration that posts a task that needs attention. I put the construction worker emoji to indicated it’s being handled then replaced it with the check mark emoji once complete.