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Does anyone else think that the "Upvoted" indicator on the list of posts should be a bit more intuitive and clear?
Right now, when you open the tildes home page or a group page, there is a square bordered box on right side of each post containing the number of votes it has received. The border indicates that you haven't upvoted it yet and when you click that box, the border disappears indicating that your vote has been counted!
Being creatures of habit, we can get accustomed to even this eventually but for a first time user, it's a bit confusing, don't you think so?
My response here might be frustrating because I won’t even directly answer your question, but I think that because tildes doesn’t put heavy emphasis on votes, the interface to display whether or not you’ve voted isn’t a big deal. And in fact by making the information de-emphasised, it helps keep that feeling in place too.
I actually completely forget that it's there the vast majority of the time.
I really appreciate just how refreshing that concept is as well. It forces conversation in a way that isn't going looking for votes, it really gives the place a phpBB forum feel... without the jank.
I forget it most of the time too, and I actually kind of appreciate it. It means that I only ever vote on things that I find fantastic or exceptional rather than just good, so it has more weight.
While I think this is a great point, old timers around here will often say "participate" or "contribute" whenever someone brings up the growth of the site or the participation or the type of content that's posted. If we want people to contribute and participate, then maybe let's make it easier to do so, right? Not everyone needs to post a comment so maybe my way of contributing is to vote up a submission, so why not make it easier to vote?
Just wondering, but I think given the spirit of the site merely voting isn’t going to be a very valuable contribution. Nonzero, but a hundred times less useful than commenting or submitting links.
I start to wonder what the point is of having post-level voting at all, if we are going to de-emphasise votes to the point that people don’t give or see them in any reliable or worthwhile fashion. Activity could just be comments. Currently, user interaction-wise, the experience is that of a half-implemented feature, and I suspect that is why it keeps coming up.
Personally I think that sometims I don't have aything to add to he conversation (that is already there) but still want to let OP know I'm glad thepost exists. In that case the vote is better than just writing a comment that doesn't add anything more than just "Thanks for posting".
It’s useful feedback to let you know that posting the link was worthwhile. I think the vote count could be capped at 10 without doing any harm, though.
Alternatively, it could be replaced with something like starring a post on Mastodon. When you star something, the author is notified and it’s added to your list of starred posts. That’s it, I think?
Tildes has both bookmarks and voting on topics. Maybe they could be combined?
It's also another valuable way to sort things. E.g. When I have been absent from Tildes for a few days, when I come back I often sort by Most Votes and Most Comments over that period to check out the topics that I missed.
And as a frequent submitter of content, it's nice to see votes on my posts so I know people actually appreciated what I posted, even if they didn't comment. But with no votes on topics, if people didn't comment I would probably stop posting that kind of content since I would have no way to judge interest in it.
p.s. Without votes on topics we would probably see a lot more noise in the comments sections too, from people just saying any old thing to let the poster know they found the post interesting since they can't just vote on it instead.
cc: @TallUntidyGothGF
It also changes color after clicking it for me in Firefox on Android and Windows. I assumed that was default behavior. On my end it seems perfectly clear, but if it's different for different browsers I can understand it being frustrating.
I think I'm in the minority with this, but I don't vote, like, ever. Not my thing. Even on other platforms, I don't "like" or any other variation of updoots. That said, I'm not opposed to what you suggest as long as it doesn't alter the simplicity of tildes design, which is what I appreciate the most. The page isn't visually busy, which I love.
I agree that it could be more clear and that some users would appreciate it. For me, that's enough and I support the idea of improving it.
How it should be prioritized vs other needs, I don't know. There are a long list of requested features and a few people working on them.