Recs, come and get your recs, fresh in this morning..

[gryffron]

I don't think anonymity is a huge deal. For anyone who actively participates in discussions, it is fairly quickly quite obvious what their opinions are and who agrees and disagrees with who. By and large we get along. I really can't imagine anyone getting bolshy about a few lurkers UNliking their posts.

Even on polite discussions, you barely have time to argue with those who actively disagree with you. Let alone worrying about those who passively thank or UNthank.

Take a break stooz. You deserve it.

Gryff

[mc2fool]

Why should these 'recs' / thanks be anonymous?

Why should people who rec a post be "outed"?

TMF allowed users to choose whether their recs would be "public" or anonymous, and I see no reason why TLF shouldn't also give that choice. If making that choice available is a lot of work then the system should default to privacy, i.e. anonymous recs, until it's possible to offer the choice.

[Itsallaguess]

Why should these 'recs' / thanks be anonymous?

Why should people who rec a post be "outed"?

TMF allowed users to choose whether their recs would be "public" or anonymous, and I see no reason why TLF shouldn't also give that choice. If making that choice available is a lot of work then the system should default to privacy, i.e. anonymous recs, until it's possible to offer the choice.

Totally agree with this.

Comparisons with the MSE forums are not as valid as comparisons with the old Motley Fool position, in my opinion, given the migration from there for a large percentage of current Lemon board members, and the Motley Fool position was defaulted to one of complete anonymity, so I think that should be the starting position here as well.

Really not trying to be critical of the great work Stooz has done here to get this feature activated, but given there's a choice that can be made with regards to the anonymity of the 'thanks' and 'un-thanks', then I think the setting should be changed to one of complete privacy from the outset if possible.

Cheers,

Itsallaguess

[Clariman]

I used TMF a great deal and used MSE from time to time. Yes they dealt with 'recs' or 'thanks' differently, but I never saw either as an issue. The key thing is that users KNOW how it works, so they can decide whether to rec/thank or not.

The more I think about it, the more I think there is an advantage to the having recs public. I think it may prevent users/posters from taking sides in an argument and hiding behind a cloak of anonymity. I think it may stop hidden factions developing - not that there is a lot of that going on.

Don't forget our usernames are private and anonymous unless you want to make yourself more publicly known, so what it the issue with a private posting alias being seen to "thank" someone?

That said, I don't have a great issue with it being private either, but worth exploring why people have issues with the more public approach.

P.S. We are not trying to replicate TMF here. This is a new site which shares some values with TMF but is primarily a vehicle to keep the community together. It does not have to be identical.

Clariman

[staffordian]

I agree with Clariman on the anonymity issue of likes.

At the end of the day, unless a poster chooses otherwise, they are simply a user name, not a "real person", so knowing who liked or unliked posts is somewhat academic.

If a poster gets posts or PMs asking why they liked or unliked a post they can either report or ignore them as they see fit.

I'm a member of several forums (fora?) with a range of rec type options, at least one gives a list of user names of those who like a post and in the several years I've participated, that is about the only aspect of the forum which to my knowledge has never given anyone a moments trouble!

Staffordian

Edit: Am I right in thinking the unlike option isn't actually that, but really an option to correct an error where you have liked a post in error?
If so, it's a good idea, as I have caught wrong buttons on other sites and liked things I only wanted to reply too.

[Gengulphus]

Ok so the best posts is good but the list of who I rec is bad?

Well, what is 'good' and what is 'bad' depends on what you think recs are for. We had quite a few discussions shortly after TLF was set up, that to me said that people's views on that range from thinking they're completely bad and shouldn't exist at all to wanting to play all sorts of rec-tarting games, and that you're never going to get any real agreement on the subject.

But for me, the useful purposes of recs are:

1. To give people an alternative to posting 'noise' posts that only say "I agree", "+1", "Thanks" or suchlike and nothing else, or that do add something else but only because the poster felt they had to, not because they really wanted to say anything more. Such posts aren't very harmful in small numbers, and we've only had small numbers of them here on TLF so far (I'd guess because most of us came from TMF and the TMF 'culture' was generally not to make such posts). But I've certainly seen forums in which long strings of "+1"s, etc, in reply to each post diluted the value of the discussion so much that I didn't consider the forum worth reading...
2. To allow people to find posts in areas they don't normally read that have a significantly better-than-normal chance of being worth reading. Not a certainty by any means - I've seen plenty of well-recced posts that weren't worth reading at all, typically because they expressed a popular viewpoint in a short, sharp, strong-on-emotion-and-weak-on-substance way (*). But sufficiently better to make dipping into a list of highly-recced posts worthwhile where dipping into posts entirely randomly would not have been.
3. To give "you're doing a good job" feedback to helpful Fools. There are quite a few Fools around who voluntarily use significant amounts of their time and expertise to help others with their problems, and recs give people a way to express their appreciation without significantly breaking into the discussion.

And the main problem with recs is that they encourage competitive behaviour and recriminations rather than useful discussions. Those problems exist even with anonymous recs - e.g. recriminations along the lines of "Shame on all of you who recced that post!" or (more weakly) "Why aren't you lot reccing this post when you recced that post so highly?" happened even at TMF with its anonymous recs. But the possibilities for recriminations in particular are vastly greater if recs aren't anonymous.

That's not helped by the fact that a rec can be intended to mean various different things, such as "Thank you", "I agree" or "This post is worth reading", but carries no hint about which meaning was intended. That means that recriminations can easily be unjustified. For example, during the pre-referendum period around this time last year, I read and took part in discussions on the TMF Brexit board. I was still undecided about how to vote and was seeking information about it, arguments to consider, etc, in the course of making up my mind. I recced quite a few posts, essentially on "This post is worth reading" grounds with a bit of "Thank you" thrown in - but I'm pretty certain that if my recs hadn't been anonymous, some participants would have seen them as meaning "I agree" and commented on them accordingly. Which I could of course reply to saying "No, I didn't mean that I agree with that post, just that I appreciated it having been made." But the net result is to defeat purpose 1 above - I might as well have posted that in the first place instead of reccing, and thus had just one 'noise' posting on the board rather than two or more (i.e. my corrective post, the post it corrects, and possibly replies to that post that were posted before I saw what had happened).

For that matter, I've had a fair number of occasions on TMF when I've recced a post I profoundly disagreed with, because I considered it a well-written and entertaining post, well worth reading even if one didn't agree with it.

There's also the possibility that the 'message' behind a rec is none of those possible intended meanings, but just "I accidentally hit the rec button" - I did that occasionally at TMF, and I've only just stopped myself doing it here several times already, with the rec button where the quote button used to be. With anonymous reccing, it's harmless enough, only resulting in someone having a bit of approval they haven't 'earned' even if (as on TMF) it cannot be reversed, and not even that if it can be reversed by unreccing. With non-anonymous reccing, leaving it uncorrected means that you're liable to be taken to task for something you didn't mean, and correcting it by unreccing is particularly likely to cause recriminations, as people are more likely to react badly to what looks like an expression of disapproval than to one of approval.

Anyway, I feel that anonymous recs are worth having, even though they have some drawbacks, but the drawbacks are greater for non-anonymous recs and they are on balance not worth having. This isn't a make-or-break issue for me - I'm pretty certain that I'll find a way of getting along with the site whichever way things are decided. But if I don't have the ability to make my recs anonymous, that way of getting along with the site will almost certainly be not to use recs at all. (Preferably not even accidentally - if I'm not to have the ability to make my recs anonymous, a "don't display the rec button" user option would be useful...)

(*) Those include a fair number of my own, by the way. I looked through and archived my 99 most-recced posts at TMF around the end of last year, and they covered an enormous range on the "worth reading" scale - everything from short, sharp remarks that I don't consider worth reading at all and am rather ashamed of having made, to carefully-thought-out posts that I consider well worth not just reading once, but bookmarking for later reference. But I'm pretty certain that someone wanting to read some good stuff I've written would do better to read a few randomly-chosen posts from those 99 posts, than to read a few randomly-chosen posts from the 20,000-odd posts I made at TMF.

Gengulphus

[Raptor]

Like Gengulphus, I have "rec'ed" posts on TMF because I felt that they merited a read and were well written and informative, but I did not necessarily agree with them myself. If it stays as is here then I would not feel good about "thanking" someone as it would imply agreement.

I vote for anon.....

Raptor.

[Gengulphus]

Why should these 'recs' / thanks be anonymous?

The MSE forums use a 'thanks' systems, which lets you see who has thanked a poster's post, and that seems to work very well.

Why should it be anonymous here?

I'm not particularly surprised by the fact that the MSE forums work well for their users. Any site will lose readers who find their policies unacceptable, and so end up with readers who like their policies or at least find them tolerable.

But that doesn't mean that the MSE forum policies will work well for TLF readers, and I'm providing feedback that a rec system that lets people see who has recced a post doesn't work well for one particular reader, namely me.

I should add that if this system were being presented entirely consistently as a 'thanks' system, so that no-one was in any doubt that clicking on the button meant "Thank you for posting that" and nothing else, I would have to rethink my views on the question of anonymity - not certain whether I would come to a different conclusion, but more thinking would be required. But it isn't - while a fair amount of the system treats pressing the button as thanks, some bits don't (e.g. the "thumbs up" image is generally associated with approval rather than gratitude, and I wouldn't normally think of "Best" as meaning "Most thanked"). Also, the system is being presented as a 'recs' system (see the title of this thread, for example) to users whose expectations of such a system have mostly been set by TMF's 'recs' system, and that had anonymous recs (apart from users being able to choose to make their recs visible in their activity logs if they wished).

Gengulphus

[moorfield]

Nice to see that we can rec retrospectively, there are several contributions and threads built up on here that are worth linking back to. Have a rec!

[Gengulphus]

I don't think anonymity is a huge deal. For anyone who actively participates in discussions, ...

What about readers who don't actively participate in a discussion? I've certainly had quite a few occasions on TMF when I've been interested in reading a discussion, found some posts in it well worth reading and so recced them - but I had absolutely no desire to take part in the discussion or to be seen as expressing any sort of view on it.

And it's quite clear from the number of recs that some posts got on TMF that they had far more readers who were not actively taking part than readers who were!

Gengulphus

[mc2fool]

...worth exploring why people have issues with the more public approach...

I disagree. I can see no practical benefit in having a discussion on this as, in the end, there's still the same implementation possibilities, two of which (always private/always outed) are binary opposites.

The only thing that's needed is to accept that people are different and allow each a choice.

[Clariman]

...worth exploring why people have issues with the more public approach...

I disagree. I can see no practical benefit in having a discussion on this as, in the end, there's still the same implementation possibilities, two of which (always private/always outed) are binary opposites.

The only thing that's needed is to accept that people are different and allow each a choice.

That's me told then!

[XFool]

Little thumb top right on a post
best of" now called Best posts and Best users" - under Quick links menu..

Its just the raw bones and more improvements to make to it. But hopefully it does most of the requirements

I don't think this is a good idea - for a variety of reasons - complicated to go into but based on experience with TMF.

As I once said on TMF, if we must have such a thing then it would be better for it to be more balanced. i.e. with an additional matching 'Down' vote or an aggregate 'Up/Down' vote.

[saechunu]

I find it bizarre that people would wish to thank someone for their post but for that thank you to be made anonymously.

What are these anonymous thankers so shy about? In essence they're admitting their thanking behaviour will differ if it's made opaque compared to it being transparent as at present, ie. they're unable to express the same thanks publicly as they would anonymously.

How odd. And all while behind an anonymous username too!

[Lootman]

I find it bizarre that people would wish to thank someone for their post but for that thank you to be made anonymously.

What are these anonymous thankers so shy about? In essence they're admitting their thanking behaviour will differ if it's made opaque compared to it being transparent as at present, ie. they're unable to express the same thanks publicly as they would anonymously.

How odd. And all while behind an anonymous username too!

That's no different from real life though, is it? For instance, when you go to vote, one important principle is that it is anonymous. Various surveys and polls are conducted anonymously because there is an acceptance that some people might be intimidated into not contributing or contributing differently if others know what they said.

And if you really want me to know that you just "thanked" me, then you can just tell me in a reply or massage.

[XFool]

I find it bizarre that people would wish to thank someone for their post but for that thank you to be made anonymously.

What are these anonymous thankers so shy about? In essence they're admitting their thanking behaviour will differ if it's made opaque compared to it being transparent as at present, ie. they're unable to express the same thanks publicly as they would anonymously.

How odd. And all while behind an anonymous username too!

But that is because you are regarding the 'recs' as 'thanks'. Just because they may be called this doesn't mean they will be used as such. The meaning of a 'rec' will be both context dependent and on the individual user's intention. See a previous post by Gelgulphus.

[PinkDalek]

...

And if you really want me to know that you just "thanked" me, then you can just tell me in a reply or massage.

Or both?

[melonfool]

...

And if you really want me to know that you just "thanked" me, then you can just tell me in a reply or massage.

Or both?

I quite like a massage myself, if that's the alternative to a 'like', I'll go with the massage I think.

Mel

[saechunu]

But that is because you are regarding the 'recs' as 'thanks'. Just because they may be called this doesn't mean they will be used as such.

Silly old me for reading what's on the tin:

...the button is labelled 'Say thanks to the author of the post:'
and clicking it adds one to the count labelled 'Been thanked: n times'

How are people intending to use this feature such that they're embarrassed or concerned about their thanking (or upvoting) action being revealed to others?

The mind boggles!

All I can imagine is that some people intend to use this facility in some sort of "tribal" way, "supporting" with their upvotes those whose writing they favour - while "disapproving" with downvotes those who write things they don't like. And enacting this tribal behaviour anonymously, without the nerve to put even their (anonymous!) username to their actions.

Seems pretty shady to me and not something a civil discussion site would wish to encourage.

Posting anonymously seems eminently sensible - because we're often discussing financial matters that no one sensible should be sharing with the world at large not least because of the risk of attracting attention from criminal elements. But there's no good reason I can see for extending that sensible anonymity to the thanking/upvoting/recommending actions; the opposite, in fact.

[chas49]

All I can imagine is that some people intend to use this facility in some sort of "tribal" way, "supporting" with their upvotes those whose writing they favour - while "disapproving" with downvotes those who write things they don't like. And enacting this tribal behaviour anonymously, without the nerve to put even their (anonymous!) username to their actions.

But there isn't a downvote is there? It's "thank" and "unthank (a previously thanked post)", in effect, no?