There are some threads and posts that are so exceptional, I've got nothing to say and would like to indicate appreciation. Ryan Lee just completed restoring a Faema Marte. That deserves an Applause emoticon. I don't want to clutter the thread with adding a post to indicate that. And having Likes to show appreciated content is different than ranked Helpful posts.

Dan, what do you think of this idea? What do others think?

I see other forums use a like or 'consent' button. I think it's useful to gauge how engaged the audience is with a post but it can also be a little too focused, where people just post for those likes (I don't think it's as likely in a coffee forum but it's always something I see on bigger social media platforms)

I really hate this idea. But, I've only ever used an emoji about 3 times in my life. No social media at all.

I could see something like "helpful" that after some number of clicks would mark that post at the top level to try and encourage viewing, but that could go wrong in so many ways.

I totally get your feeling here, Gary. But, "like" buttons basically mean nothing in general, so the best way to let someone know you really appreciate what they're doing is to post about your appreciation. Before you know it, your "like" emoji will become a measure of popularity as opposed to an indication of genuine appreciation. The "like" emoji is the one step onto the slippery slope of social media noise for this site.

Excellent idea IMO.

On another well run forum I frequent, posts have a "like" button (it is excluded from some certain areas of the forum though). There are options for various reactions (like, funny, confused, dislike, educational, etc.). I think that forum is much better off with the reaction buttons, I think it would work in this forum as well.

Similar to a like button, this other forum lets members rate topics from 0-5 stars, which I also like, since it shows what the community thinks the value of the topic is.

For posts that I appreciate here I usually click the "mark helpful" thumbs-up icon above the post to show it.

I'm on another forum with reactions and I have mixed feelings about it. We redefine the reactions by community consensus to fit our needs, using the vote up count in a caption contest thread and there's controversy about the site's built-in anonymity for reacting to posts with disagree, WTF, or flagging a message as spam or abuse which is sometimes done as a gag and other times hard to tell why the reaction was garnered. For question type posts, the vote up button is like accepting an answer which re-orders the posts in the thread with the more liked posts first which makes it hard to know where to pick up with new messages.

I don't really check my likes, awesomes, vote ups, etc. as I would have to go back to the messages I already posted to see the reactions and I feel on this other, more conversational forum that the reaction buttons can tend to take the place of replies which may or may not be a good thing.

On the flip side, you could leverage the reactions to show liked or helpful posts, as Dan has done here: helpfulposts.

I have mixed feeling about it. At work, we use Slack and "reaction" emoticons are almost expected. It's reached the point where nearly every message gets some reaction -- and if it doesn't, you wonder if you've done something wrong.

We had a similar discussion of the helpful button. It hasn't been a raging success and some posters seem to use it as a "I've read this message" indicator. On the other hand, most members use it judiciously, so it's actually helpful (as an added bonus, you can see only those posts you've marked helpful; a sort of cheap bookmark).

Dan, can we add emoticons, like one for applause? It doesn't need to be a new feature, just another choice in our Smilies library.

I'll check what's available. I'm not a fan of hundreds of mobile phone emoji; they are more distraction than information. The phpBB ones also come with license and tracking issues that I prefer to avoid.