In a world where we have reacts, do you prefer to keep agreement voting?

• agree-react for "keep agreement voting"
• disagree-react for "at least for an initial react experiment, get rid of agreement voting and just design the react-palette to facilitate agreement voting"

This isn't a binding poll, but a couple people had mentioned this deeper in comment threads and I wanted to comment making the question somewhat more explicit and take the temperature of how people are feeling about it.

Today's UI tweaks include the ability to try out different layouts for the React Palette. You can click the icons in the top of the React Palette and see options like:

Default:

Icons only:

Icons / name grid

Mixed:

(the idealized version of this one probably shows you reacts in the order of frequency-that-you-use-them)

With some further thinking, I'm realizing one of my concerns is that this is an unfortunate direction for LW.  I LIKE that LW is text-heavy.  I LIKE that the norm is to use complete sentences, and to leave actual comments when there are questions or clarifications to the main point.  

I don't think adding more mechanisms for low-effort low-information-content (what, 5 bits per react?) will make LW better, and in fact could make it much worse, if it substitutes for some amount of comments.  Cutesy icon debates are fun, but don't actually add value.

[ note: partly posted to see if I can get some downvotes or negative reacts.  but also because it's a real concern, though I don't think I understand the dynamics well enough to know if this is actually a problem for this feature. ]

We should distinguish between possible worlds that have low realityfluid due to implausible physics (like FTL travel, which only occurs in simulations, because causal universes don't look like that [LW · GW]), and those that have low realityfluid due to implausibly fine-tuned sociology/psychology/&c. (which mostly occur in simulations rather than the basement, because the fine-tuning is most parsimoniously explained in terms of what Powers in the basement are interested in simulating).

This thought occasioned by how I'm really enjoying Hello, Tomorrow! on Apple TV+. It's about salesmen hawking real estate on the moon in a setting with robots and rockets but 1950s-like culture and æsthetics, which gives it an extra layer of fine-tuning: it's not just that the real future doesn't look like that (as is the problem with most science fiction, where the present day's depiction of the future bears the "design signature" of the present day); it's that it's a present-day depiction of a 1950s depiction of the future. An analogue of this show that was actually made in the 1950s wouldn't have a racially integrated cast (without special remark), or present-day production values, or make use of any number of TV storytelling tropes that were popularized in recent decades that I'm not enough of a film buff to be aware of.

Raw feedback: I feel a sense of being overwhelmed with information. It doesn't seem like I should have this feeling - it's not actually a lot of information and it's easy enough in theory to ignore - but nevertheless, I do experience it.

Ok, I should probably wait a bit before making this recommendation, but I currently think this is a nice addition, which should REPLACE agree/disagree, rather than being yet another mechanism for low-effort feedback.  Don't overcomplicate it with different placement or fancy anti-reactions, just put a straightforward reaction display and selector where the agreement buttons are today.

I'm tempted to recommend that it replace Karma as well, but that's more baked into the site and would be trickier.

Suggestion: 'true but unhelpful' react with the icon being a bored/tired face. I currently express this with karma downvote and agreement upvote, but the sorts of people who write these sorts of comments will usually have difficulty interpreting that feedback signal, given that the behavior often correlates with not understanding how agreement and discursive productivity are very different things.

Reason we need this: It's a good way of pointing out choir-preaching and succinctly explaining how it can make the site worse (it's boring and unproductive).

UI thought: in practice I actually find it hard to tell whether a react applies to the parent or child comment, and meanwhile because I'm not used to looking on the bottom-right I just wasn't noticing them at all.

↑ comment by the gears to ascension (lahwran) · 2023-05-24T22:36:40.295Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

Agreed. The reactions also feel inconsistent with the existing voting options. I'd suggest something more like this:

I'd also suggest that the react-add icon should have a plus somewhere on it. eg, compare discord's:

slack:

and unlike my screenshot, maybe it would be best to put the add-react at the end, rather than the beginning, of the list of reacts. I'd also put just a little more spacing between react types.

Replies from: Raemon, nim

↑ comment by Raemon · 2023-05-24T22:41:50.158Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

After arguing a bunch with Ruby and habryka, I'm currently leaning towards a PR that keeps the reacts in the bottom-right but moves the add-react icon over there.

I agree the icon should have a + button, will work on that.

Replies from: Dagon, lahwran

↑ comment by Dagon · 2023-05-24T23:53:06.199Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

this has the interesting effect of putting an active element in EVERY corner of the comment - UL has collapse and voting, UR has the vertical dots for subscribe/report, LL has reply, and LR has react.  This is madness, but may also be brilliant.

↑ comment by the gears to ascension (lahwran) · 2023-05-24T22:45:24.923Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

how about something not in the bottom right? bottom right significantly changes the eye movement pattern needed to read a comment. eg, instead, how about:

css to achieve this:

.NamesAttachedReactionsCommentBottom-footerReactions {
    right: initial;
    bottom: initial;
    position: initial;
    margin-left: initial;
    border-radius: 3px;
    margin-bottom: 8px;
}

Replies from: Raemon

↑ comment by Raemon · 2023-05-24T23:01:40.099Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

That was my preference, Ruby and Oli didn't like it because of too much forced visual clutter and were more confident that people would learn to look in the bottom-right. I weakly disagreed but if a bunch of people prefer it on the left I may restructure it a bit.

Replies from: habryka4

↑ comment by habryka (habryka4) · 2023-05-25T04:11:37.930Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

I think I changed my mind on this, FWIW, after playing around more in this thread. I think bottom-left is indeed better.

↑ comment by nim · 2023-05-25T17:41:43.360Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

I like this much better for 2 reasons:

1. The add-react-button and reacts-added should be together. It's counterintuitive to push a button in one place and have the result appear somewhere that might be off-screen on a long enough comment.

2. I think it makes sense for all the metadata about a post to stay together. Who wrote it, when they posted it, whether others upvoted it, and what reacts it got are all metadata. I think any argument for putting the reacts at the bottom could be applied to also putting vote scores at the bottom as well.

Serious question that I'm surprised I'd never asked before: why are the vote and agree/disagree scores at the top of the post, instead of elsewhere?

Replies from: lahwran, Vaniver

↑ comment by the gears to ascension (lahwran) · 2023-05-25T17:59:24.872Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

I think any argument for putting the reacts at the bottom could be applied to also putting vote scores at the bottom as well.

Enthusiastic agreement on this! I think votes should be at the bottom, and that it would make sense to move them together!

↑ comment by Vaniver · 2023-05-25T18:58:47.478Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

It makes sense for the scores to be there because you might use that as data to determine whether or not to read the comment. It would probably encourage better behavior for the votes themselves to be at the bottom of the comment--but as you note, probably the button and the thing it changes should be together.

Balanced reaction and anti-reaction seems to remove the icon, rather than showing a 0.  I don't think antireactions are a good idea - I'd much rather someone who feels otherwise just choose a different reaction to show, rather than trying to remove someone else's opinion.

The vote-like counter on the react popup is hard to find if not looking for it, and the concept is confusing as to when to use it.  

First round of changes based on feedback from this thread. There are a bunch of new reactions, some UI changes, and some small bugfixes. Not being in this changeset does not mean that a suggestion has been rejected; this is just a first pass.

• New reactions: Agree, Disagree, Obtuse, I'll Reply Later, Not Planning to Respond, I Don't Understand, Non Sequitur, Shaky Premise, Too Many Assumptions, Misrepresentation, Continue, Not Worth the Time
• The add-reaction button is moved to the bottom-right
• The reactions display highlights reactions that you yourself made or antireacted to
• Replaced the icons for Support and Concrete
• Recapitalized some reaction titles to be in title-case

I miss coffee. I used to have iced-coffee in the morning a lot, but I've been scared of caffeine ever since my insomnia scare of January 2021. (I've been to psych prison for sleep deprivation madness twice, and I never want that to happen again.) Yes, I know about decaf, but they don't get all of the caffeine out, and if you haven't been using, your tolerance is all gone and you're super-sensitive to even small doses; I feel safer just abstaining altogether.

I was catching up with Seinfeld on Netflix out of '90s nostalgia, and in one episode they mentioned a drink called "Postum", which turns out to be a once-popular caffeine-free coffee substitute that got discontinued and then resurrected by the effort of a couple of tenacious fans. It's OK! They even have a coffee-flavored variant, which smells realistic but which I haven't tried yet out of superstition. How do they get the coffee flavor without the drug if the decaf people don't manage to do it, huh?!

Subthread for proposing new reactions. Icons for the existing reactions come from The Noun Project, so this is a good place for finding more icons that match the existing ones.

↑ comment by simon · 2023-05-25T05:12:19.733Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

Since I suggested them in another comment [LW(p) · GW(p)], some potential replacements for "muddled" and "wrong". Here I'll add some possible icons:

• TL;DR

• Unnecessarily wordy [and make "Overcomplicated" specific to the content not form]

• Unable to parse

• Non sequitur

• Ambiguous (i.e. multiple potential meanings)

• Disagree with premise(s)

• Unclear point

• Misrepresentation [could potentially replace "Strawman" but be more general]

(note I don't want to imply "lie" here only that the reader thinks there is a mismatch to what is actually going on, maybe this one should be clarified. I drew my own icon since I couldn't find one I liked the relevance of on the noun project).

I reacted to Wei_Dai's comment. It had 3 keys and 3 thank yous, in that order left to right. I clicked the key, so now there's 4 keys and 3 thank yous. When I clicked it, the icons switched positions so that there were 3 thanks and 4 keys, in that order. I don't like that it switched positions, e.g. because I have to reparse the icons and numbers to verify that what I did had the intended effect.

What does "I saw this" mean? "I already saw this in another place" or "I saw this comment, if it's important"? I think it needs clarification.

I do want to thank you for NOT including my least-favorite part of karma and agreement voting.  Thank goodness for no strong reactions!

Happy to see experimentation here. Some quick thoughts:

• The "Column" looked a lot to me like a garbage can at first. I like the "+" in Slack for this purpose, that could be good.
  
• Checkmark makes me think "agree", not "verified". Maybe a badge or something?
• "Support" and "Agreement" seem very similar to me?
• While it's a different theme, I'm in favor of using popular icons where possible. My guess is that these will make it more accessible. I like the eyes you use, in part because are close to the icon. I also like:
  • 🚀 or 🎉 -> This is a big accomplishment. 
  • 🙏 -> Thanks for doing this.
  • 😮 -> This is surprising / interesting. 
• It could be kind of neat to later celebrate great rationalist things by having custom icons for them, to represent when a post reminds people of their work in some way. 
• I like that it shows who reacted what, that makes a big deal to me. 

↑ comment by the gears to ascension (lahwran) · 2023-05-25T13:35:27.814Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

I agree with the :tada: icon, 🎉, but I don't agree that 🙏 means "thanks" or that 😮 is actually surprised. 😮 looks sorta {horrified, frightened, shocked} to me.

Replies from: Raemon

↑ comment by Raemon · 2023-05-25T16:41:33.923Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

That's based on how you see those icons get uses in the wild, or what they look like to you? I agree that both of them are somewhat weird to interpret to mean those things, but, like, 😛 also is not at all what I do in real life when I'm making the particular flavor of silly joke that 😛 conveys, yet here we are.

Replies from: lahwran

↑ comment by the gears to ascension (lahwran) · 2023-05-25T17:58:31.376Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

That's based on how you see those icons get uses in the wild, or what they look like to you?

yep both of those. I'd label those "praying" and "shocked". this is not to say you're wrong to see them that way locally, just that my view of emoji zeitgeist differs from your view of it.

Replies from: Raemon

↑ comment by Raemon · 2023-05-25T18:14:07.158Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

Nod, gotcha. Do you have emoji you typically use for surprised/thanks?

Replies from: lahwran

↑ comment by the gears to ascension (lahwran) · 2023-05-25T19:27:40.058Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

none of these are quite right. exclaim is the most appropriate one, I think.

in comparison, I guess

isn't that weird after all!

Reacts have been in use for some time now. Having seen various posts and comments with reacts, and how they're being used, I think that the "I checked, it's false" react, and probably also the "I checked it's true react" are net-negative. Basically the issue (which I've seen mostly with the "I checked, it's false" react) is that a lot people are using it as basically equivalent to a "disagree". (As a rough estimate, I'd guess a least a third of usages have this problem.) Despite the fact that the description says "I looked up sources, did empiricism, checked the equations, etc.", I frequently see it used on statements of opinion, where there are not really any authoritative sources, empiricism might be wildly expensive, unethical, or otherwise impractical, and there are no equations to be found. Even in cases where it's possible to look up the answer, I frequently find myself suspicious about whether or not the person submitting the react actually did so.

But there's no way to ask people who use an "I checked" react to provide their sources/reasoning. Like, do I send a private message? Do I leave a comment under the comment with the react, but addressed to the person who used the react? In practice, I'm not going to do any of those things, and probably most other users won't either, it's just not worth the effort. But it also seems bad to have a bunch of "I checked it's false" tags lying around the site, attached to statements like "beans taste good" or "technological progress will likely stagnate by the year 2100 due to exhaustion of possible discoveries".

If one has actually checked a statement by experiment, by checking the literature, or by mathematics, I think the natural thing to do is to post a comment describing the experiment, linking to sources, or walking through the mathematical reasoning. It's more valuable to readers not to compress this intellectual work into a single opaque react. And if my experiment is flawed, my mathematical argument has a hole, or I cite Deepak Chopra in a discussion on quantum mechanics, the fact that I left a comment means that people can point out my error.

I think the "changed my mind" Delta should be have varied line widths, like https://thenounproject.com/icon/delta-43529/ (reads too much like "triangle" to me at the moment).

Another suggestion, maybe a "too verbose" reaction? And a "too abstract" reaction?

The fact that the title of this post says "Open Thread" makes me think that the intention is for the conversation in the comments to not just be about this new reactions feature. However, the lack of mention of this in the post plus the other comments only being about reactions makes me think otherwise. What is the intent?

"Concrete" reaction should be a concrete truck imo https://thenounproject.com/icon/concrete-truck-1791966/ the current one is a brick wall, which is not really suggestive of concrete at all, and a wall in this context is far more suggestive of an accusation of obtuseness.
A cement truck is an entity who brings concreteness, so it would be like saying "you have the virtue of a concrete truck" and I find it delightful.

I haven't seen any discussion about this part of the motivation for reactions:

In my experience, seeing a list of names that I respect, marked as having reacted positively to my writing, feels much more motivating than a high karma number. Conversely, seeing negative reactions from names I don't respect feels less bad than a low karma number. And seeing a mixed reaction, with positive reactions from people I recognize and negative reactions from people I don't, creates a feeling of community.

That does NOT match my experience, and it anti-matches the experience I want to promote.  I think it's overall good to make names visible near the opinions they endorse, but I would not want it to be a primary element of the display.  I do take the username into account when deciding how much effort to put into a very long post or comment, but I wish it weren't the case - I'm sure I miss out on some good content, and I'm equally sure that I waste a lot of time on names I recognize but the post isn't worth the effort.  

I don't want there to be isolated sub-communities inside LW - if your "feeling of community" is limited to a subset of users who've become familiar to you, I think that's a loss.

↑ comment by Vaniver · 2023-05-25T17:00:48.979Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

Relatedly, I haven't checked if this setting interacts with reactions, and... I was about to say "presumably it should", but the names don't show for reactions until you hover over it anyway, and so probably it wouldn't have any additional effect?

In the current UI, the list of reactions from which to choose is scrollable, but that's basically impossible to actually see. While reading the comments I was wondering what the heck people were talking about with "Strawman" and so forth. (Like... did that already get removed?) Then I discovered the scrolling by accident after seeing a "Shrug" reaction to one of the comments.

Can one react (and see reactions) to a post, or only comments?  I have to admit I worry a bit about information overload, as we now have karma, agreement, and reactions, none of which have particularly great guidance on how to make best use of them (either as a reader, for filtering or understanding comments, or as a voter, for communicating with the poster and other readers).

I'd really like to be able to see all the reactions at once, if possible.

I think the "I agree to this" react should simply be labeled "Handshake".

Also, a react to indicate that this comment should have been split into multiple comments might be nice (like you may think this comment should have :p).

Neat. Looking at the list of reactions, one jumps out to me as out of place: the wrong reaction. The others reflect various feelings or perceptions and can be interpreted that way, but the wrong one seems too strong to me and overlaps with the existing agree/disagree voting. If you think something is wrong and want more than the disagree vote, seems like that's a case where we want to incentivize posting a reply rather than just leaving a wrong react with no explanation.

Feedback: The reactions panel is difficult to use on mobile.

I've just had an interesting experience that changed my felt-sense of consciousness and being embodied.

I've played over 80 hours of the newly released Zelda game, which is a lot given that it's only been out for 14 days. I do not normally play video games very much, this has been a fairly drastic change in how I've spent my personal time.

I'm really focused while playing it, and feel very immersed in the world of the game. So much so that I had a quite odd experience coming back to the rest of my life.

Yesterday, after playing the game for an hour, I wandered around the place my team works, and found a newly remodeled bathroom I had not seen before. I looked in, remembering how the room used to be.

I'm not quite sure how to describe the experience, but as I looked into the room, my brain ran the check "Is this one of the rooms that my body is physically located in or not?" and I instinctively stuck my head in fully to confirm that I was visible in the mirror. (I was.)

It was as though my brain had fully separated "Viewing a location" and "My human body being physically present in the location".

Noticing this has further reduced my felt sense of "being in my body". I suspect one day if I am uploaded, remembering this experience will reduce any experience of "but is this really me" to zero.

Poor icon choices:
- triangle for changed mind
- scales looks like "fair and balanced" rather than "borderline nitpick"
- support pillar ... but mostly I don't know what support means

Eh / nitpicks
- elephant for "requesting additional info" is a bit obscure.
- cactus looks a bit like a person and does not actually look pointy.
- exclamation implies "wow" more than it does importance
- does graduation cap need the hands? maybe a book for scholarship would be easier to parse?

Particularly good icon choices:
- lightbulb, key, checked, x, hits the mark,
 

Might make this a post later, but here a few of my current thoughts (will post as separate comments due to length).

And I’m not sure about the scales being an icon for “seems borderline.” Some sort of fuzzy line or something might be more appropriate. Scales make me think “well measured.”

Some other comments touch on whether the react panel is too complicated. On any other platform, I would agree. Not here. It is not even more complicated than Slack, and troves of people use Slack with no trouble. I think the posters/commenters the moderators seem to want to see on LW are easily capable of dealing with much more complexity. All useful data. If you are worried about distraction, add an personal setting to hide it. 

Having some way to view whether I've already left a reaction on a post would be great. Currently it just shows a number, and then if I click on it, the number decreases if I've already left a reaction. Would be nice for the background to be some color if I left the relevant reaction (maybe green if I pro-reacted and red if I anti-reacted).

↑ comment by Vaniver · 2023-05-25T17:02:27.337Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

(The I saw this reaction doesn't show up on the parent comment, because of the antireaction, which seems weird.)

The subtitle copy on most of these is uninformative or duplicating the title. "I saw this", "this exhibits the scout mindset", "I feel empathy towards this". Maybe remove the subtitles for most of the reactions?

Very nitpicky (sorry): it'd be nice if the capitalization to the epistemic status reactions was consistent. Currently, some are in title case, for example "Too Harsh" and "Hits the Mark", while others are in sentence case, like "Key insight" and "Missed the point". The autistic part of me finds this upsetting.

I think a reaction which suggests that something is mislabelled might also be helpful. Like for reacting to misleading titles (... can people react to top-level posts?) or similar.

When people see content they agree with and want to support, that mostly gets expressed through upvotes; when they see content they disagree with, that's more likely to result in writing a comment. This biases the perceived reception in a negative direction.

Agreed. I think I previously had some vague belief in something like this being true, but reading the above really helped crystalize the belief. And if true, I think it's important.

It makes me think back to this talk about code review.

“Your code is bad and you are bad. Have a bad day.” Too many code reviews feel like this, and it saps the enthusiasm that drives open source. Instead, let’s explore how to give reviews that are truthful but encouraging, boosting the skill level of contributors and the quality of the project. We’ll look at “tact hacks” that nudge communication in a friendly direction, antipatterns to avoid, the pesky human emotions that can tempt us into reviewing poorly, and techniques for leveling up newcomers without losing all your coding time.

Has there been any user research prior to this post? If so, what were the findings?

What does it mean to anti-react “Wrong” when no one has reacted “Wrong” (for example)? (Or “Shrug”, or “Additional questions”.)

Also, the hover tooltip for a reaction covers up the one(s) below it—very annoying, makes it hard to browse them.

Feedback on "I saw this": I think that's the wrong icon, the eyes are open too wide, that emoji ends up being used to mean like "holy shit, omfg, WOW", which is different. It's worth having that as a reaction, but you already have "changed my mind", which is a more appropriate way to express that in the LW context.

I'd recommend one of the single eye logos like this. instead https://thenounproject.com/icon/eye-100409/

Or a single eye that's looking up and to the left, at the comment, would be better. So I drew one like that, uploaded to the noun project. It's awaiting moderation.

I partly support the spirit behind this feature, of providing more information (especially to the commenter), making the readers more engaged and involved, and expressing a reaction with more nuance than with a mere upvote/downvote. I also like that, as with karma, there are options for negative (but constructive) feedback, which I mentioned here [LW(p) · GW(p)] when reviewing a different social discussions platform that had only positive reactions such as "Aha!" and "clarifying".

In another sense, I suspect (but could be wrong) that this extra information could also have the opposite effect of "anchoring" the readers of the comments and biasing them towards the reactions left by others. If they saw that a comment had been reacted with a "verified" or "wrong", for example, they could anchor on that before reading the comment. Maybe this effect would be less pronounced than in other communities, but I don't think LessWrong would be unaffected by this.

(Comment on UI: when there are nested comments, it can be confusing to tell whether the reaction corresponds to the parent or the child comment:

Edit: I see Raemon already mentioned this)

↑ comment by jimrandomh · 2023-05-24T18:50:51.173Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

I agree this is a concern. At an earlier stage of this prototype, the reactions were at the top with the rest of the voting buttons; moving them to the bottom was done partially to reduce the chance that you see the reactions before you've read it.

Replies from: MakoYass, Amarko

↑ comment by mako yass (MakoYass) · 2023-05-24T20:05:18.572Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

So, are you having similar thoughts about votes, too?

Replies from: Dagon, jimrandomh

↑ comment by Dagon · 2023-05-24T20:11:44.216Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

Moving the whole "action bar" to the end of the comment makes a lot of sense to me.  Voting, agreement, and reactions should all happen AFTER reading, like reply does.  

You MAY want to repeat the totals, non-interactively, at the top, if the intended use is filtering as a reader.  IMO, most comments are short enough that this isn't necessary.

Replies from: Raemon

↑ comment by Raemon · 2023-05-25T05:23:11.379Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

I've mocked up a version of this. I suspect we'd ultimately want the karma/agreement available at the top of the comment, but might try shipping the MVP version for now.

↑ comment by jimrandomh · 2023-05-25T02:30:24.879Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

It's probably a thing with regular vote-score, but I think it's worth the tradeoff of having scores at the top because when there are too many comments to read everything, the score feeds into the decision of what to read vs what to skim.

Replies from: MakoYass

↑ comment by mako yass (MakoYass) · 2023-05-25T04:21:31.890Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

Reactions seem like they're going to be far more likely to be useful for that purpose.

↑ comment by Amarko · 2023-05-24T19:32:27.111Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

Perhaps they could be next to the "Reply" button, and fully contained in the comment's container?

I'm surprised to see a "Wrong" icon as a counterpart to "Verified" and not something like "Citation Needed / Requested" or something else that solicits information / evidence.

Sounds like a solution in search for a problem TBH

Another UI note - the scrollbar is so thin it is hard to use.

The icons are small (unavoidable), some have too many details, and the outlined ones are too thinly stroked. The lack of color makes them harder to distinguish.

This will be great for shortform! (Though maybe people don't use shortform so it doesn't matter)

When I moussed over all the reactions I saw "missed the point", and assumed it means "I can't see what the point of this comment is.", where as the explainer text seems to suggest that it actually means "this comment has missed the point." ("You missed the point." vs "I am missing your point).

"Missed the point" and "Hits the mark" appear to be exact opposites. So I suppose a negative react of "Hits the mark" is kind of a equivalent to a "Missed the point"?

No suggestion, just this one seemed like a react that might be used or interpreted more ambiguously than the others.

I think the "Support" icon looks like a garbage bin and I find that hilarious.

It takes time to iterate on features like this to improve them and iron things out, so I think "promising" is more aligned with what the bar should be then "I'm happy with this in it's current state". And IMO it meets the bar of "promising" pretty easily.

The support icon looks at first glance like a garbage can although I can tell it’s meant to be a pillar.

Currently the most-reacted to icons are on the very right of the list. This feels like it's the wrong way around. I want to notice the most-reacted icons first, which will still be on the left side.

For comparison, I wanted to link the post a while back that did the other experiment with reactions. I can't find it. The closest I got was this:

Improving on the Karma System [LW · GW]

This would be a good time to streamline requesting explanations from voters.

It's very common that the person issuing the reaction doesn't know whether the recipient wants or needs a full explanation, and it's very common for the recipient to really really want an explanation for the reaction after all, and for the recipient to be too worried about being rude or annoying or looking dumb or wasting space by asking for one, so I think it would be worth making that a private, two-click action.

Is it a bug that I don't seem to be able to react to comment replies, only to top-level comments?  Currently using Chrome on MacOS, if that matters.  Oh, even worse - I can't vote or agree with replies either - that row of icons is unresponsive.

Further testing, including refreshing the page (and losing the green bar for new comments), shows this is very inconsistent.  Some threads seem to work, some do not.  Also, some rollovers seem broken - I keep getting the popup for author information "stuck" on the screen, obscuring stuff underneath, and it doesn't go away when I move my cursor.

It is specifically happening to Gordon's and Raemon's replies to David Bravo's comment.  I can't vote, disagree, react, or reply to them.  The parent comment I can act on, EXCEPT the reply button is missing entirely.  Oh, wait again!  The reply button for that comment is BELOW those two replies - that's very wierd!  And the reply below that (from jimrandomh) seems normal.

Bug: I can't undo my vote in the react/anti-react voting widget. When I click on the upvote/downvote buttons it just reapplies the vote instead of undoing it.

The LessWrong Review [? · GW] runs every year to select the posts that have most stood the test of time. This post is not yet eligible for review, but will be at the end of 2024. The top fifty or so posts are featured prominently on the site throughout the year. Will this post make the top fifty?

I find myself wanting to react (Actionable) / (Non-actionable). Or to say: yes, let's act on this. This reflection makes me want, (Can we make this actionable) / ... I suppose the opposite is covered by existing Concrete and Examples reactions. I don't find my thinking well-factored to these categories of reactions.

I find myself a little frustrated needing to scroll out sideways to engage with reactions. Maybe a pop-down option, and maybe a more stateful modal, I might find easier.

These reactions strike me as remarkable compatible with Web Annotation WG recommendations and standards at W3C, and currently fairly usable, and social, within hypothes.is. I have created reading groups with multiple groups of friends with great satisfaction on hypothes.is. It would be nice to grow toward eventual compatibility, and these W3C standards seem much more succinct than the largest they're known for.

I've recently read about the sequence about quantum mechanics, and now I feel interested about experiment with two half-mirrors where amplitudes cancel out (Configurations and Amplitude [? · GW]).

1. Is such an explanation approximately equivalent to quantum one? I've heard that phase of wave represents angle of amplitude complex value.
   "On each reflection, light wave phase is shifted by pi/2; there are two ways that light goes to the top, with 1 and 3 reflections; these ways cancel out due to interferention with phase difference = pi".
2. Is it possible to do such an experiment at home? In particular, are half-silvered mirrors suitable for the experiment sold somewhere?

The "Borderline" icon currently being a balance is something I most naturally interpret as "balanced fairly", whereas a similar-ish alternative -- open hands gesturing up & down -- reads more like "iffy" to me and might better communicate the concept. Here's a simultaneously too complex and too crude mockup based on https://thenounproject.com/icon/hand-disinfection-3819834/ :

A similar idea to indicate that something might be kind of a toss-up (which at first blush strikes me as less good than palms balancing, yet maybe better than the icon already in use), would be some sort of flipping coin, e.g. something like https://thenounproject.com/icon/toss-a-coin-3819618/ sans hand. Or perhaps https://thenounproject.com/icon/coin-flipping-2307580/  including the hand.

Another idea could be a thumb sticking out sideways ala https://thenounproject.com/icon/thumb-horizontal-4154461/ , though somehow that reads to me as possibly more judgmental maybe.

Finally, I noticed these half-arrows pointing in opposite directions: https://thenounproject.com/icon/double-side-arrow-236719/ . I don't know if their abstract nature would make them feel less judge-y or if them sorta mirroring the left/right arrows we already use for voting would read to some as actually *more* unnecessarily judgemental.

Using a plain heart to express empathy seems easier to confuse with "I love this" than seems ideal. Here are a few other options that seemed potentially appealing after looking through results at The Noun Project for "Empathy" and "Hug":

https://thenounproject.com/icon/take-care-4694299/

https://thenounproject.com/icon/hug-4400944/

https://thenounproject.com/icon/heartbeat-977219/

https://thenounproject.com/icon/love-4939234/

https://thenounproject.com/icon/hug-4401677/

Isn't this an empirical question?

Trying to guess how we'll like it and how it will change behavior seems crazy compared to just running the experiment.

Make the change, record differences in commenting behavior. Get feedback on how people like it. Take a vote to keep or revert it.

I'm shocked and a bit disturbed that treating it as an empirical question isn't higher-ranked and more commonly suggested.

I think "Muddled" unfortunately seems easier to naturally interpret in an accusatory way, so something else indicating "this was hard for me to see / wasn't clear to me" might work better. My initial thought was to maybe use "Foggy" as a metaphor (as in, "there might be something there, but I'm having a hard time seeing it"). I suppose something with a lighthouse probably looks more like "a beacon of clarity", though here are some other possible Hazy / Cloudy things:

https://thenounproject.com/icon/cloudy-day-3240714/

https://thenounproject.com/icon/night-fog-40783/

https://thenounproject.com/icon/foggy-weather-3244281/

https://thenounproject.com/icon/foggy-1422953/

https://thenounproject.com/icon/fog-1958890/

"Strawman" seems like it might be kind of niche, so I went on a quest looking for something more indicative of "I find this to be misleading / misrepresentative" before realizing this apparently already exists. I can't say I really have any issue with the one already in use, but since there seems to be lots of ways to approach this and I already have several at hand, here's a multitude of alternatives just in case any seem especially resonant. Themes depicted below include loss of signal or mutations in translation, frames being warped or distorted or stuff that's been twisted, something that's erroneous or unfair or illusory, ideas seeming substantially askew / outlandish / alien, and other wrongness. Enjoy!

https://thenounproject.com/icon/miscommunication-2746050/

https://thenounproject.com/icon/cyclops-60205/

https://thenounproject.com/icon/risk-4478883/

https://thenounproject.com/icon/twist-down-2583424/

https://thenounproject.com/icon/arrow-2543664/

https://thenounproject.com/icon/spiral-705644/

https://thenounproject.com/icon/spiral-705646/

https://thenounproject.com/icon/coil-spring-2099878/

https://thenounproject.com/icon/twist-5313674/

https://thenounproject.com/icon/optical-illusion-44906/

https://thenounproject.com/icon/mesh-tools-5709061/

https://thenounproject.com/icon/puzzle-5736537/

https://thenounproject.com/icon/speech-bubble-156409/

https://thenounproject.com/icon/ufo-1900465/

https://thenounproject.com/icon/alien-900190/

https://thenounproject.com/icon/alien-2241958/

https://thenounproject.com/icon/clipping-podcast-4866904/

UI feedback: The preview widget for a comment appears to cut off part of the reaction bar. I don't think this makes it unreadable, but was probably not intended.