Can we get a thanks button

This is very nominal , but I'd like a button to say thanks when someone really helps out with a problem .

This way someone could have like 2000 thanks and the forums would know he/she is a helpful member .

 

This was briefly discussed, actually. Personally, I completely agree with the idea, but I doubt they'll ever go for it.

 

I like this idea and also agree with this. Post count is all we really have, but a high post count doesnt mean a helpful member; it only means a member with a lot of posts.

 

Actually, Unity Answer has this kind of system. And it will be great if it is implemented to the forum as well.

 

This is a good idea.

There's nothing to stop mates thanking each other to get a high count. Granted people are that pathetic.

 

Does it? I'm generally on the forums or the skype group, so the only ready I'm ever on answers is when looking for answers to a solved problem. I know answers has the answer voting system, but I disn't know about the user voting system.

 

I suspect there may be several opinions regarding this, but I tentatively give this my support.

 

I would really like to see this system used. I think it would also encourage users to post things that are actually helpful to the community. It would also sort out the real contributors of the forum.

This has my vote!

 

It's a smart move to have something similar like that only on the unityanswer, where people go to, when they REALLY want an answer and there is no place for gossip/offtopic.
The forums have too much noise and chitchat and most people are not here for helping. And experience from other forums clearly show that not only "helpful" posts get a thank you, but also funny/quirky ones "that made other's day". A high thanks count doesn't mean one is helpful, either. It's just an e-penis - with people sooner or later asking/begging for thank you's in order to have it increased.
If one stays in here for a constant week, one can already judge who is helpful in here and who is here to make noise. People won't need a thank you counter for that.

 

Problem?

 

Yeah cause I seen someone with 2000+ post they joined 3 months after me and yet they made more posts then me.. most of the posts they made were useless..

So I support this idea

 

You mean, like the 800 million Facebook users ? ;-)

 

Support from me too. *Coughs loudly to get Admin attention* *blows on a horn that reals Ad'Ack' into the same discussion we had not long ago*

 

Hey guys, so this was an idea Hippo Coder suggested in a previous thread. Right now we've got the new Collaboration sections up and running, so for the time being I have invited anyone interested in making suggestions for improvements, moaning or offering 'WTF are doing?' comments to PM me directly.

I'm not saying we won't be doing anything along these lines, it's just after making such a big change we want to see how that goes. As I have said before, I am very interested in helping community members identify who's giving worthwhile information.

I'll keep an eye on this thread, as it's important to hear what you guys have to say.

 

+1 to this idea.

 

Indeed.

Seems to me like a pretty idea to be honest. The forum could use some more quality checks.

 

NPSF3000, the problem I see and have experienced is that people having 2000 thankyous for posting nonsense and others have 200 for making quality and helpful posts, so the system is flawed.
It's just a scream for attention, really. "I got more thank yous....I need more respect".
People that are really thankful for a posting think about using that feature very wisely, while people that are only here for the thankyous beg for these and give it to each and everyone, making the entire system pointless.

People needing a system like that to be helpful seems weird to me. Those in the community that really care and offer help every day for members problems or support for their product don't need anything like that. It's only people that frequent the forum 14 hours a day and post in each and every thread.
It's a "fix" for something that isn't broken. Many people are superhelpful and motivating and respected in here for doing so and they don't need anything like that.

I'd rather wished for a thankyouNOT function for some of the guys here. All the technical forums work wonderfully, now even the collaboration forums is heaven on earth. Only a handful of boards suffer from members producing noise and a thankyou feature will not solve that issue. The same people that produce noise asked for certain overthetop functions for the collaboration forum and now ask for the thankyou function. While it's not the system that's flawed or need to be improved but some of the people's attitude

 

I don't think that people will go crazy with wanting these "Likes" maybe have it only effect the "unity" sections? and only the OP can like a answer?

 

Hey that's a pretty cool idea. Not to say it won't be abused but it's probably more useful than a ThankYou button, you're right.

 

Sadly, that's just how people are. Even in game development, if you want people to do something more, you offer them a reward (even if the reward is meaningless).

Having a "Thanks" button will not only identify who has been helpful, but it will, in fact, encourage others to be helpful.

Strange, but very true.

 

If you have a "thanks" button, you also need to implement a REPUTATION system then.
Its pointless to have thanks button if you don't have a reputation system.

 

I support a Thanks button, but I am all against a vote up/down system.

 

While i have nothing to say against a like button in general ( count this as a +1) i would be very unhappy with a reputation system. It`s not the value of reputation that decides if an answer is useful or not, it`s the knowledge.

And you can very quickly collect a big negative reputation by simply having an unpopular but still true opinion, or by simply having the wrong style to ask questions or to give answers. Personal experience told me that one thread is enough here. That`s why i heavily dislike reputation systems.

 

i need more internet points! +1

 

Personally, I'd love to see a 'Top Row' sort of thing. Just a few thumbnails pointing to updates, announcements, interesting threads and impressive projects.

 

Personally, I'm against a thanks button. I haven't really seen it used well on any other forum. At best, it's a feature most people ignore and rarely gets mentioned or used, and at worst it's an e-penis thing where people always make sarcastic and "witty" posts that clog up the actual discussion just to get "points". A lot of the time there are users who dedicate almost every post to trying to get as much "points" as possible. Some users have pointed out that a thanks system can distinguish who is helpful and who isn't. Well, even assuming the thanks system wouldn't be used for "witty" posts, imagine a scenario where someone responds to a thread with a post another user doesn't like. That user can point out "well, you have a thanks level of one, so you obviously haven't contributed to this forum very much, so who are you to talk?" If you don't think that kind of thing can happen, then I have to mention that I've seen it happen on other forums.

 

Let's face it. Nobody reasonable enough hides their knowledge because of a missing thanks feature. The people who will use this feature haven't been helpful in the past and won't actually be in the future. It's a state of mind that you either have or don't.
There are no super secret things that couldnt be solved in here because of a missing thank you button. If one posts a polite and well written thread people will help.

We need to take into account that some peoples existence in here is based on makin noise in whatever direction one can imagine. The rest is superawesome uniting powerrangers.
The thanks button would reintroduce the noise that we all love having lost in the collaboration forums.
Unfathomable Chaos gave a pretty exact premise of what happens with a thanks button.

What should be the most awesome reward for helping out is an honest thank you written in words by the person you just helped. Thats as honest as it can get. You don't get that ever so often. One has to invest that extramile to get it back. .
If you do that a couple of times thats how you build a reputation. Having 200 thankyous doesn't tell me anything about any user.
Helping is not an egoistical try to raise a thankscount

There are goooood handful of people that I can tell you right out of my head that I consider being helpful, either to me or many many others in here. They have been supportive over and over again.
But I could easily point to 10x the people that are just annoying, being negative and not helpful at all. A thankyou button will not change people.

 

I love this idea! I want to collect as many thanks as I can!

 

What, are you afraid I will vote you down?

 

*Suffering from knee-jerk thread checking and lost the post I was about to make, so I'll sum it up*

Couple points raised so far:

Those 2000 thanks could easily be built up by a group of people bartering with one another to artificially raise their thanks counts by agreeing to thank each other for their posts. That number could very well end up being more useless than the high post counts people have amassed from trolling Collaboration threads. Research on the background behind the number still becomes a requirement.

There will be the period where people won't realize that the feature got implemented (people still aren't noticing the posts stickied on the collaboration thread about why their threads don't have replies). This period may not even end, so in the long run, the only people who gain from the button are the people playing forum games or demanding their threads be thanked.

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In the form of visibility, I could see adding a section to people's profile pages where it lists threads they have thanked and were thanked. I could understand a generic visibility over the whole forum where you can easily find threads filtered to have thanks or having been thanked over a number of times with quick jumps to the specific posts. I could even be swayed by having a link below a person's name leading to page of posts that they have made that were given thanks (only if they have pages that were thanked and the posts had a small preview). This could give the helpful people more visibility to the community.

But I cannot give any support to a number that will simply be used to boost one's ego.

Just like the whole post count requirement that got thrown around in the collaboration forum discussion, it simply becomes a barrier:

"You need to have [this many] thanks to be considered credible."

People will look for ways to get around that barrier, whether they have to force their way, bargain, or cheat their way through. We already have people complaining that their post count goes down when the mods delete posts to clean up threads, so I can't see this leading anywhere positive overall.

---------------------------------

I do agree with Acumen that the lack of a thanks button is not hindering people from sharing information. Being able to find the shared information more easily I can see making a fuss over, but people don't withhold information simply because they don't build up a number when they do it.

That said, how about a non-intrusive agree button? All these +1 posts around the forum get silly after a while. I'd rather see how much weight a particular post in a thread has amidst the community then watch it get pushed out of view by a dozen +1 posts. Something that only effects certain posts, maybe makes them more visible (background change?) and isn't tracked per person. It's still a silly idea but it's less damaging if it gets abused (you just wind up with a multicolored thread is all...).

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Ironically... Summing up my thread made it longer...

 

A reputation system can be easily abused. False negative reviews by bored kiddos/trolls are common in most forums...

 

+1

Lol...that aside, I do actually agree with you. An "agree" button would be nice, but I think a ratings system will just cause more problems than it solves...the trolls will just abuse the heck out of it. Plus, an agree button would help to sort out the more relevant threads.

 

If it wasn't for the potential for such a thanks/rep system to be abused, we'd probably already have one. The system should be designed so that to give somebody thanks it has to be in regards to a post. The system should be set up so that the mods can see a list of all thanks received by a user click on them and it takes them to the forum post where they received it. If that were possible the mods could quickly root out people abusing the system.

Problem is it would make more work for the mods. There already is a reputation system anyway, if you spend enough tiem on the forums you know who the helpful members are.

 

I have seen this kind of system implemented in many forums over the years. Eventually it turns into a huge pissing contest; people start threads just to get their friends to rate each other. Even without a way to rate down, you get people farming up a fake status. The worst part is the less helpful of individuals are the ones that end up with the highest rankings. This in turn makes new posters trust the wrong people.

This works in the Unity Answer page because it's not an open discussion forum. I say, at best, there perhaps should be a way to display your UnityAnswers Question/Answer count (as a user option.) The percentage rating should not be displayed as it can be wildly misleading (some one that answers a lot can have a low percentage simply because his answer was not always best in the list, even if it's a good answer.)

Overall, though, I think people make their reputation as they go. I am sure a lot of people know about my posting track record (for better or worse ) and should you be curious about a specific user's feedback you can just look at his posting history to see if he has been helpful or just trolling.

Just my 2 cents.

I don't need a number to know that I should pay attention to a post by Hippocoder or JustinLoyd (specially the tasty trolly ones .) Same way I know Titanty will defend Nintendo with a dying breath.

Your posting history makes who you are, and as I stated above, it's not that hard to seek a user's post history. I do it all the time.

 

I support this thread.


IF YOU LIKE MY POST GIVE ME PRESS THE THANK BUTTON PLEASE.


(Sarcasm doesn't translate well)

 

+ 1

Since it would I don't have to make stupid '+1' posts to show my thanks for a reply.

I'm not bothered about the number of thanks being tallied per user though, don't think its really that important as a rating system. I just want to be able to show my support, or show my appreciation towards a thread or specific post.

 

I disagree with this. And I disagree with the suggestions in this thread.

You see, I'm a husband, a father, and a coach. And, I build training games professionally. And though I've spent 2 decades programming,in the last few years, my focus has changed. While I used to write about shaders (GPG7) and networking (GEG2), now I write about why humans do what they do.

Ready for a surprise? Parenting books used to suggest paying children to do chores. Or maybe putting little stickers on a chart. Unfortunately, they were wrong. Studies have shown this is the WORST thing you can do. Why? Because money and stickers are an extrinsic reward. And though extrinsic rewards can sometimes work in the short-term, they are extremely destructive to long-term motivation.

I know it seems like a good thing. A 'thank you' reward mechanic would be kind of fun. But in just a few months, it will significantly change the nature of the community. The intrinsic joy of helping someone will be replaced by a desire to get a +1 on the counting system. And once you start using extrinsic rewards, you can't go back. The science is clear.

There's an joke. If you want to get your kids to stop playing games, then pay them for every mission they complete.

Gigi.

 

I wasn't really thinking of people abusing the system , I figured it would be cool to know who the most helpful people are .

Then again , we already know who the wise ones are around here .

 

I think a "thanks system" would be a great idea.