The "Liked Post Button" addon.

[Timothy]

I think it would be a very good idea to add the "Liked Post" button that is available to add to vBulletin forums.

I use it on my own two forums and the members love it. It's a cool way to tell someone that what they've said is very good and lists the people who have thanked the poster. Kind of a visual pat-on-the-back.

The "reputation" method is good, but most members have no idea that it's ever there, in the stock location and appearance.

Another idea is to move the reputation symbol to near the other main buttons and name it "Thanks". There is an addon for that as well, on the vBulletin.org site.

Just a thought for improving an already great site!


Tim

 

[bakechef]

If there was a "like" button, I would like that post,

 

[PattY1]

A thumbs up simile?
A bowing person simile?

 

[Dawgluver]

A word of caution: another forum I belong to had to remove the "reputation" button, it had led to very hard feelings when one member would disagree with another and knock their reputation. It turned into a beauty contest/p*ssing contest. I think most DC members get along and play well with others, but there might come a time when someone might run with scissors. Just my opinion, FWIW.

 

[Timothy]

A word of caution: another forum I belong to had to remove the "reputation" button, it had led to very hard feelings when one member would disagree with another and knock their reputation. It turned into a beauty contest/p*ssing contest. I think most DC members get along and play well with others, but there might come a time when someone might run with scissors. Just my opinion, FWIW.

This site has the rep button restricted to only positive rep. There is a setting for allowing the negitive rep, but I'm glad they don't use it here. It does cause problems.

What I'm refering to is a "Thanks" Button enabled by this addon:

[AJAX] Post Thank You Hack - vBulletin.org Forum

This version is for vBulletin 3.8.x, the version of this site. I use the 4.0.x version on my sites.

 

[PattY1]

a thumbs up simile?View attachment 12119
a bowing person simile?

or high five View attachment 12120

 

[Timothy]

As a forum owner, I gotta tell ya, posts that have nothing in them but "Thanks" or and icon expressing thanks, are bandwidth hogs.

Picture this; over the period of a year or two, there might be a thousand posts that have nothing in them but "Thanks" or the equivalent. Each has a signature line of two or three lines and maybe a graphic.

Each time that thread is read by someone, the bandwidth that is used is nothing but wasted money.

As a result, most forums frown on "Thanks" posts and some will even delete them.

The "Thanks Button" uses almost no bandwidth, doesn't make a post of a thank-you, and shows the poster that this-many people liked what they said and lets everyone see who liked the post by listing the user-names.

It's a win-win thing. Members get to give and receive public thanks and the owner of the site doesn't have to pay for bandwidth that is mostly wasted.

Just an opinion from a person who is a programmer and forum owner.

On forums who use the "Thanks" hack, the feature is used at a tremendous rate and is loved by the members.

 

[buckytom]

in it's infancy, his forum used to allow negative karma but only by the mods. i railed against that. i'm happy that free common sense came out on top.

it seems to me that a "like" button is a liitle on the needy side of attention getting. it's for people who are lazy or have short attention spans. if someone wants to support your post, do it with words. just my opinion, of course.

 

[Andy M.]

BT:

 

[Dawgluver]

BT:

+1!

 

[FrankZ]

Timothy.. thank you for the suggestion.

 

[buckytom]

oops, i just reread my post and i meant this forum, not tim's (i typed his instead of this).

my reply about this was not against tim in any way, just my opinion.

 

[Timothy]

in it's infancy, his forum used to allow negative karma but only by the mods. i railed against that. i'm happy that free common sense came out on top.

it seems to me that a "like" button is a liitle on the needy side of attention getting. it's for people who are lazy or have short attention spans. if someone wants to support your post, do it with words. just my opinion, of course.

The massive use the "Thanks Button" gets on other sites would show your reasoning to be flawed, BT. As you've said however, mine is just another opinion and worth no more than yours.

I'm not sure how much about vBulletin forum maintenance you know about, but in the background, there is a lot of auto-maintenance that is done by vBulletin. Post counts, Thread searching, optimizing by user-posts, database consolidation....etc, etc....

Having a forum tradition of "Thanks" posts throws a lot of data into the fray that really doesn't need to be added to that maintenance. The "Thanks" Button takes the "Thank You" posts out of the overhead of the forum maintenance and makes all the counts more accurate as far as actual member participation in threads.

After a huge database is developed for years, (as this one is), those "Thank You" posts become a significant part of the database overhead.

It was just a thought to help streamline the site and make it less likely to have database problems later.

It's kind of a "Pay me now or pay me later" type thing.

Timothy.. thank you for the suggestion.

You're welcome Frank. I worked as a database Admin for slightly more than 20 years. This is just an idea to help avoid future table loading with posts that contain no more than "Thank You" and long siglines and to make post and thread counts mean more. It would also help the search feature quite a lot and reduce site bandwidth.

This information can be verified via the vBulletin.org site or the vBulletin support folks.

If you do a database search for posts that have less than 5 words in them, I think the count of them may surprise you. All of that is included in every search or optimization of the database.

 

[Timothy]

oops, i just reread my post and i meant this forum, not tim's (i typed his instead of this).

my reply about this was not against tim in any way, just my opinion.

Ha! No offence taken, BT. I knew what you meant.

I'm doing nothing but trying to help out with the experience I have in Database Admin.

I've heard of vBulletin databases that had as many as 10K of "less than 5 words" posts. Most of them saying thanks or showing only icons. There is a Jeep vBulletin Forum out there that has 10's of millions of posts. I think it's still the largest vBulletin forum in the world. I can only imagine the maintenance it needs at that size. I've run several non-vBulletin databases of that size over the years and when that large, they always strain the maintenance side of the system to it's max. Database errors become commonplace and a real problem.

Eliminating or lessening the posts that can be changed into non-maintenance notations in the "Thank You Hack" is just good database administration.

 

[Timothy]

Ha! I don't mean to beat a dead horse....

I'll be quiet now...

 

[buckytom]

oh, i certainly understand database control. i work everyday with a/v servers, automation systems, and sql databases. systems like to be neat and streamlined. they start acting funky the bigger they get, especially to the point of being full.

you make a good point, tim, from an administrative point of view. i was speaking purely from a user's p.o.v..

i still think, however, you build a kinder community when thanks and support is done in words.

 

[Hammster]

It's probably just me, but it seems a written thank you is a dying thing. I try to always write a thank you or other positive note if I like something in particular. The quick reply window works well for that purpose.
I realize it takes a moment or 2 longer than just clicking a button, but to me at least, a written thank you has more meaning.

 

[Zhizara]

As long as it doesn't get counted for the original poster. Then it could deteriorate into a popularity contest.

 

[Timothy]

As long as it doesn't get counted for the original poster. Then it could deteriorate into a popularity contest.

There are quite a few options in the settings for the hack. You can show total thanks, how many thanks each persons given, etc etc...

Those cause popularity contests with some forums. If you just make it so a list of members who have thanked a person, showing at the bottom of the post in question, it's just a way for folks to say thank you without making it a post.

It has an editable line in it that comes stock saying; "The following members thank so-in-so for this post." and then lists them alphabetically.

 

[buckytom]

so now i have to change my username to aaron aardvark to always be first?