Please add a LIKE button to the forum.

[101mike101]

A LIKE button would be an asset to the forum. All other forums have one, sometimes even a "dislike" button. E.g., thumbs up or down.

It would save bandwidth and give members more of a sense of community.

Please add a LIKE button.

I think the like button encourages people to say what they think is popular, rather than what's true. And what's popular depends on which crowd you are in. Something that's popular in one crowd, might be unpopular in another.

It's a way to substitute popularity for truth and make truth irrelevant.

But being popular is addictive. I think adding the like button in this forum might increase people's participation in it.

[magizi87]

+1 to OP

[avanfurwet]

Not all other forums implement this. Don't even think it's a standard feature of phpBB?
But maybe the software could do it with an extension or plug-in, if the forum admins chose to.

Currently, if any poster cares enough about about gathering support for their views or suggestions, this forum already provides the "polls" feature.

You might try a poll to see how many posters would like a like button?

[Wotan29]

LIKE button would be cool. But a lot of people suggest this since years, so probably nothing will happen...

Apart from that:
As we are in a porn forum, the LIKE button should be a bit more creative than in "normal" forums.
What about "cock up/cock down" instead of "thumbs up/thumbs down"?

[101mike101]

appreciate the feedback

I think the like button encourages people to say what they think is popular, rather than what's true.

wait, Breaking News...Truth in Porn? That is hardly a criterion for a LIKE button. It's about "liking something" not fact-checking it.
Of course it reflects what is popular, that's the whole point.

Yes, i know not EVERY forum has a LIKE button.
Polls are impractical, useful as polls, but nothing more.
But, ok, lets have a POLL.

Pure liking or disliking applies only to porn itself and not to discussion about porn.

Because if you read some of the discussions here, then you will find strong disagreements about opinions and facts. Truth and facts matter in sex and in porn, just as much as anywhere else.

Some people talk about porn addiction for example. Which is a controversial topic among porn-fans. And there are all kinds of studies and claims, which say that porn is either good or bad for you. So, truth and facts are very important in such a discussion. Which you can have in a forum like this.

[avanfurwet]

^ But mostly what people post here is opinions. And the OP is just saying others can like or dislike those opinions. FWIW.

Of course truth and facts matter more than opinions.
The main problem in this forum is that some people can't or won't distinguish between their personal opinions and preferences and actual facts.
But a "like" button can't help with that.

[101mike101]

^^^ LIKE ^^^^

If someone posts something that is a serious issue, an issue based in "truth" why couldn't another "LIKE" it?
A LIKE button does nothing but say that the person tipping the LIKE button likes the post. It actually covers both opinion and "truth."

No harm in test driving a LIKE button for a couple of months to see its utility and acceptance, right?

I suppose you are right that a like or a dislike count below the comment is just information about how the audience feels about the comment. There is no censorship and no harm.

But I've seen a number of forums and comments sections, where the website automatically sorts initial posts and comments by their popularity and puts the most popular ones at the top. And some forums deliberately obscure and eventually delete unpopular posts and comments.

Once the website starts collecting information about the popularity and unpopularity of posts and comments, then there is a temptation to distort the information for business and money-making purposes. It often leads to soft and hard forms of censorship. Which might work out well in terms of business and making money. But this makes a mockery of ethics, freedom of speech, truth, and facts.

It's a kind of business that misuses and abuses the users.

[avanfurwet]

^ I don't think there is much danger of the owner of this website taking too much notice of what posters "like" on this forum.

[101mike101]

^ I don't think there is much danger of the owner of this website taking too much notice of what posters "like" on this forum.

I don't think any human noticing is required for promoting popular posts and hiding or deleting unpopular ones. Because this kind of thing is usually done automatically by a computer, according to the number of positive and negative votes the post gets.

This kind of thing is very simple and easy for computers to do, once the computer has all the information in its database. A computer programmer will write a few line of code, and the computer will keep doing this indefinitely, without any further attention or labor from anyone.

[avanfurwet]

^ I don't think there is much danger of the owner of this website taking too much notice of what posters "like" on this forum.

I don't think any human noticing is required for promoting popular posts and hiding or deleting unpopular ones. Because this kind of thing is usually done automatically by a computer, according to the number of positive and negative votes the post gets.

This kind of thing is very simple and easy for computers to do, once the computer has all the information in its database. A computer programmer will write a few line of code, and the computer will keep doing this indefinitely, without any further attention or labor from anyone.

As a free service, LP provide a forum where a very small percentage of their customer base write their opinions, and often nonsense.
The forum runs on an industry-leading standard software package so I guess it's relatively easy to maintain.
Again, "like" buttons are not a standard feature of phpBB software.

It may be quite trivial to add a like button.
Less trivial to customise the presentation of "boards" based on likes. Of course you can do it. But it's not "a few lines of code".
Doing that would pretty much erase the business logic of using a standard software package.
Does the site owner here really care that much about the opinions of a (very) few posters to manipulate the presentation of posts based on "likes"?
I doubt it.

And if he did that, then probably the few intelligent people who post here would stop posting contrary opinions because they realised they were being manipulated.
So you'd end up with a poor man's facebook, with muppets posting for "likes" and imagining they are "influencers".
Although they influence nobody, since the site owner gains no insight from manipulated "likes".
Which all seems pretty pointless to me.

[101mike101]

...
... then probably the few intelligent people who post here would stop posting contrary opinions because they realised they were being manipulated.
So you'd end up with a poor man's facebook, with muppets posting for "likes" and imagining they are "influencers".
Although they influence nobody, since the site owner gains no insight from manipulated "likes".
Which all seems pretty pointless to me.

Perhaps the effect of such software is to make intelligent people less intelligent. So instead of leaving the website and boycotting it, people change what they say and try to say only popular things, rather than that which is true.

Because this kind of manipulation works on Facebook and other such places, without destroying their business model. The owners of Facebook would probably say that such manipulation makes their business more profitable, rather than less. Popularity is addictive. And when everybody tries to say only popular things, then this becomes a self-reinforcing cycle. Everybody becomes popular, and nobody cares about the truth.

There is such a thing as a 'wisdom of the crowd'. This is where a group of people collectively come up with a better decision and answer, than anyone of them can do on their own. Numerous studies have shown this to be true, but only in certain circumstances.

When people in the crowd don't influence each other, and everybody says that which they think is true, then their average answer is better and more accurate than any single answer. In such a case, the crowd is wiser than any individual.

But this wisdom of the crowd is destroyed, when people in this crowd start influencing each other in a non-egalitarian way. This is when opinion leaders emerge and become popular, while other people in this crowd become unpopular. And this is exactly what the Like and Dislike buttons do. They show who is popular and who is unpopular and enable the emergence of opinion leaders, which destroys the wisdom of the crowd.

A recent study has shown, that the wisdom of the crowd can actually be enhanced, when people in the crowd influence each other in an egalitarian way. And an egalitarian way is where everybody can influence each other equally, without anybody having more influence than the rest or less. It's where you don't opinion leaders, and nobody knows who is popular and who is not.

This study is described at the link below:
https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases ... 060717.php

[avanfurwet]

^ IMO we're going way off-topic. All the OP wanted was a "like" button for people to press, if they want to. It won't change the world.

I posted about why I think your fears are unfounded, because I don't think the owner of this website would gain by investing time and money to manipulate the presentation of this little forum by promoting liked posts and suppressing unpopular ones. This forum just isn't that influential. If the website owner doesn't take much notice of opinions from the small minority of customers who post in the forum, then IMO no good, or harm, will come of allowing a "like" button.

IMO people will continue to post whatever they want here, including opinions which are unpopular but which the poster feels strongly about and wants to vent.

Of course some posters just want to be popular and they already post accordingly. Maybe a "like" button would encourage more of this. Who cares?

IMO intelligent people don't magically become dumb when they have the opportunity to make popular-sounding suggestions to harvest "likes".
They will exploit this opportunity for their own ends only if they think that gathering more "likes" will get them what they want. Like politicians promise popular-sounding policies at election time.
But that's no different to starting a forum poll.

IMO "Wisdom of Crowds" isn't even relevant to "likes" in a forum.
WoC works when anyone can make any variable input, for example to guess the weight of a cake. The average of many different guesses can be pretty accurate.
Just pressing a "like" button unfortunately does not produce any variable result which can be analysed, or any wisdom.

[redwhre]

this forum is so broken that the 'edit' button is broken and you cant edit your own messages and you think they are gonna add a like button????

HAHAHAHA