New Feature Idea: Adding a '+1' Feature

[theljstaff]

Hello!

As noted in our news post a few days ago about the redesign, we want to get better about asking for your feedback on new feature ideas or upcoming changes prior to rolling them out. We'll be reviving this lj_feedback community as part of that endeavor, and this 'new feature idea' post will get things started. (We're still monitoring the redesign post

Comments

[mpoetess]

First, kudos for a) asking, and b) thinking ahead about the kind of control users might want over the feature, if it's implemented. Please, please, stick the dismount by listening to the users.

Now some actual feedback:

A +1 feature is not something I personally have been longing for, but I've seen people asking for it for years, and I can see its usefulness, especially in discussion communities. (Something that would be useful for anonymous discussion would be the ability to +1 a comment even when logged out.) Properly implemented (with journal-owner control over whether it's on or off for both posts and comments), as long as it doesn't drag down any of the existing page functions, I don't have a problem with it.

As to ordering the comments on a page, though, given Livejournal's threaded discussion concept, it's hard to picture how one could make any sense of a page of comments ordered by the number of +1s, rather than chronologically. It also seems like a pretty resource/script-heavy thing to do to comment pages that are already

[rhye]

+1 XD

[chordatesrock]

Perhaps the people who came up with this idea read primarily the comments on lj-news, where the threads tend to go:

"blah blah blah good points blah blah blah"
-"+1"
-"Yes, this."
-"Exactly!"
-"IAWTC"

But on smaller journals and communities, or even larger ones when they're aimed at encouraging discussion, threads tend to go more like:

"blah blah blah good points blah blah blah"
-"No, I don't agree because blah"
--"But don't you think that blah blah blah?"
---"Well, maybe, but you have failed to consider blah!"
--"Yeah, exactly, and also blah!"
---"Well, yes, blah, but not also blah! Because reasons!"

In the former case, a +1 button would reduce clutter and make actual content easier to find. In the latter case... no.

Also, editable subject lines FTW! Which means for the win, in case you have no idea what it means. Plz to be doing that.

[lifestation]

Just blah! :D

[serpent_849]

+1! :)
That's a great feature for communities. Whether we like it or not, it IS common to leave comments saying just +1, and they clog up the page. This idea has existed since when Facebook wasn't even a big thing.

Also many communities don't need to have this option in every single post. And if this feature is used for voting, it's important to have control over who can give +1 (like members only) or who can see the number of +1's or the people who gave +1.