I would like to propose replacing up and down voting on comments with emoji reactions. Since Lemmy doesn’t have a consequential karma system, I don’t believe the gamification of comment upvotes helps engender a discussion with a diversity of opinions. Instead of a binary choice, we will be able to express a far greater range of reactions. I see emojis as being especially helpful as a replacement for downvotes since it will help the author understand why the reader disagrees. While I agree that replying instead of downvoting is a better choice, it’s not realistic for everyone to have the time to do so.
For posts, voting serves a useful purpose in creating a curated list of most popular posts in each community. This is important for people who don’t have time to follow all posts in their subscribed communities.
This sounds like a terrible idea to me. You don’t need a range of emojis to be able to express yourself, that’s what comment box is for. Having emojis would just reduce actual interaction. Your interaction with people shouldn’t be a race, just make it meanigful instead.
How many emojo reactions do you propose we should chose from? From strongly agree to meh! to strongly disagree, so three reations, add mild opinion reactions for five. Is that what you mean?
Apps like Signal and iMessage allow any emoji. I don’t have a strong opinion about a limited set vs any defined in Unicode.
Emojis make everything worse, everywhere
