I like the idea of adding more expressiveness, pictorially capturing sometimes fleeting moments of emotion or accurately representing an emotional state that can occur.
Do they capture the necessary expressiveness for the context? Facebook's reactions cover more emotions, but FB is trying to support reaction to anything that can be posted.
Considering that it's Github, how about things relevant to software engineering, like: agree, disagree, support, insightful, obsolete, misleading. I can't imagine it being helpful to know that someone felt "heart" about an issue comment.
I recently wrote a post about Facebook Reactions and if it would be effective at helping quantify sentiment. (http://minimaxir.com/2016/02/facebook-reactions/) The tl;dr is that I believe that Reactions are redundant outside of positive/negative classification.
GitHub actually has both +1 and -1, which satisfies me. But there's not much productive purpose with a smile/heart/tada other than to be quirky. (The thinking_face is neutral and adds nothing in this aspect)
Yeah, as I asked below: Will this be a meaningful form of communication and is the language (subset of images) sufficient? Can small changes like this perhaps change how PRs, Comments, etc are treated? Will it be productive, a distraction, or a NOOP?
I think GitHub wanted an option to express "I don't understand this," and decided :confused: was a better fit. Which makes sense, because :thinking_face: could mean "I'm considering this" or "Interesting point," which is not, I think, what that option is meant to convey.
I think the point is: Will this be a meaningful form of communication and is the language (subset of images) sufficient? Can small changes like this perhaps change how PRs, Comments, etc are treated? Will it be productive, a distraction, or a NOOP? Would you use this feature or have you used a feature like this?
These are the following reactions:
Do they capture the necessary expressiveness for the context? Facebook's reactions cover more emotions, but FB is trying to support reaction to anything that can be posted.