More and more people prefer to use text communication instead of using their phones for, well, phone calls. But the text has limitations: it cannot convey emotions or even simple gestures like a nod or a thumbs up. Emojis have solved the problem, especially when used for reactions.
We use reactions all the time for our internal communications and thought they would have a real benefit for our comment sections. The simple positive grading system we added a few years ago wasn’t particularly expressive.
You can still vote on a comment that you like and agree with, which will be represented with a “thumbs up” icon. But you can also add some emotion to this: laughter, amazement, shock, regret, there are 18 different reactions to choose from. You can always change your mind later and cancel a positive vote or choose a different reaction.
👍
✔️❌❤️🙏💪👆
😀🤣😍🥳😎😢
😱😡🤯🤭😐🤑
Emojis will look slightly different depending on your platform, but those are just stylistic differences, the meaning remains the same.
The system is simple to use: just press the emoji button next to the “reply” button to open the React menu. For each comment (besides yours) you can vote and add an additional reaction. Reactions will be displayed at the bottom of the comment, and you can hover / tap on each of them to see the names of the commenters who used that particular reaction.
Note: If you see a comment that breaks our posting rules, the “report” button is also in the React menu. Don’t use it as a negative vote, however, this is meant for offensive comments or posts that break our guidelines in other ways.
While we were updating our comments system, we took the opportunity to add some features to our mobile site that were already present in the desktop version, including avatars. If you haven’t already, go to your account settings to choose an avatar (we support Gravatar).
Even the simple positive voting system was not available in the mobile version, now both the desktop and mobile versions of our site support reactions, as does our Android app.
Note that you need an account to rate comments and to set up a custom avatar (registration page here). You can see the reactions even without an account, however.
We hope this more expressive feedback system helps promote the insightful and helpful posts we often find in our comments section. But as you can see from the emoji selection, we’re not against having fun either.
One last thing: the new system is brand new and has only undergone internal testing. If something goes wrong or doesn’t work as it should, leave us a comment here and we’ll fix it.
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