Does anyone else think having emojis as a response to a comment/thread would be a neat addition instead of only upvote/downvote?
Reddit seemed to sorta do that with awards but thats not quite what I'm suggesting.
Something similar to GitHub for instance, except we keep the upvote downvote system as-is.
This would hopefully discourage the use of upvote/downvote as a "I like/dislike this" button while also adding the ability to more accurately express the emotion the post/comment illicited
Additionally, there are a lot of people who are mostly just lurkers and have no desire to post, but they want to be able to emote further then just a upvote/downvote but DON'T want to actually post a comment like "I love this" or "You're so right" or even just commenting an emoji, because making a comment is a whole extra action that makes them visible, opens up to comments or upvotes/downvotes.
Eh, I think most would still use upvote and downvotes majority and add on with a emoji sometimes, just like awards on reddit, just without needing to pay for the ability to use them.
Again though, it would be interesting to think about some sort of system that replaces it altogether, but I don't see a way to make that viable at the moment.
A first idea would be to have 3 categories of emojis. positive reactions (thumbsup, smiley, rocket, ...), neutral ones (hat, ...) and negative ones (vomiting, ...). Together with a proper downvote symbol, this could map onto the old categories.
But that'd have to be transparent and intuitive. many users don't want to learn about specifics. and what exactly votes and what's decoration. It has to be obvious and work without learning things.