Do you worry that the new like/dislike plug-in will be mostly utilized by one demographic of reader leading to mostly promoting of gifs and possible (unintentional) reduction of welcoming environment of AS from hiding of different/unpopular opinions?
good question! we’ve been knocking around ideas re: ‘how to handle comments’ for a few weeks now – our comment policy has always been super-lenient (don’t threaten to kill me with a pitchfork, no hate speech, etc.), we don’t require registration and ppl can be anonymous – and this is the first thing that we’re trying.
i don’t think it will hide unpopular opinions expressed in a civil tone of voice. it hasn’t so far. i think if people are rude or talk like evil anonymous devil-children, they’ll get voted down. but not unpopular opinions. i trust our readers to be better than that. if they’re not, then i’ll take away everybody’s fig newtons and cry.
you touch on some other risks i’m looking out for as well, and i definitely understand your concerns re: one demographic, gifs, etc.
that being said, i made a few changes this afternoon to it that i think will be better – i made the images different, and took away the “like/dislike” words because there’s no need to like or dislike everything someone says. only logged-in members can rate anything now too. def keep me updated on your feelings about it.









