I have added a new plugin that allows users to react to posts with any emoji. Continue to like posts with the heart but if you feel a different way, you can now express yourself!
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Since this a feedback place, let me say I don’t like the new emoji reactions. I have no problem with the idea, but the aesthetics. They look, out of place and don’t fit with the overall aesthetics of the site. If they didn’t have that dark gray background. Obviously not a major dea lbreaking complaint, but since I found something to complain about. 
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I actually thought the same thing. The reactions aren’t as clean looking as I’d like. Still, I rather enjoy them. Let’s see how people use them over time.
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I know what he means but I actually really like them
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There’s a nice unicorn one that’s good for the mythical 40 story projects brewing in the Raleigh pipeline.
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Here’s some general feedback. It would be nice to not have to use 20 characters in a reply.
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Yup
(Additional characters)
)It was set to 20 characters by default so I of course haven’t given it much thought until today. I’ll keep it for now.
My argument for this limit is to empower the like and this newest reaction feature. No offense to anyone but there’s no reason to post something that short in most cases. It’s not discussion, just validation. Look a few posts up. In my opinion, @OakCityDylan and @JosABanks posts are unnecessary and if this behavior isn’t curtailed by at least a simple barrier, then the forum becomes a little annoying with all these insignificant short posts. (or at least I think it will)
Again, no offense but I don’t see a strong reason to change it right now. Just like or react to posts and move on.
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I don’t disagree. I always try to see more than just my gut instinct side to any situation and as the moderator and owner of this platform I support your decision 99%, Leo.
But sometimes an emoji just doesn’t do it and sometimes brevity is appropriate. That’s the 1% missing in my 100% support.
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I agree, and if anything, I feel like the character limit needs to be longer.
If you want to validate something other people said, just click the “like” button. If you disagree, concur (as in you agree but for a different reason than the original writer) etc., then I think it’s on you to explain yourself.
A lot of the posts that barely get past the 20-char. limit (or the ones where people add random text to pass that barrier) don’t contribute to a lot of discussions here, anyways. When you just say “I agree!”, “this sucks and it’s stupid!”, “good idea!”, “nice picture/thank you for sharing!”, or you’re just repeating catchy slogans, are you really contributing anything? Or are you just building a really microscopic version of an echo chamber of self-validation?
And if you care about actually making your views clear in a meaningful way to other people, you’d need MUCH more than 20 characters.
True. But you can always clarify your thoughts or add to what’s already being said. Otherwise, what is your purpose of adding to the conversation?
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Sometimes there’s a legit reason to post something under the 20 character floor, like when someone asks a specific question who’s the developer on this, did X project get started etc etc etc and it’s kind of annoying to have to add extra characters in order to get to the limit. And it’s not like that he limit actually stops people from posting things like this because people just add extra characters.
Something that may be more beneficial than a min is a max post size. Or people can just scroll by the really short posts or the really long posts that address 4 other posts in a single 1000 word shot idk.
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Oh boy, we are starting to eat our own.
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I’ll just say that I’ve written more than my fair share of long posts, so i’m certainly not against them whatsoever.
That said, sometimes someone asks you a question in a post that only requires a short answer like yes, or no, etc.
At this point, I gamify my short answers to try to nail them exactly at 20 characters.
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Can we also set a max? Not that I don’t love reading someone’s entire treatise on parking regulations that they’ve been saving up for 10 years…
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I think there should be a limit on how many options we have to “like/etc” a post. I’d prefer it be like texting where there is a like, dislike, love, haha, exclamation point and question mark. I think that would limit the short posts.
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I think the new emoticons are actually better for solving that issue. I think there should actually be MORE emojis added, like “Yes” and “No” for instance.
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I think it’s easy to get overwhelmed by the different choices for emojis, though. Plus, different people could use the same emoji for different reasons (or vice versa) if there’s too many options.
I kinda like what @Will mentioned (also kinda like Facebook’s reaction buttons), where you have multiple emotional reactions you can choose from -but from a choice of 5 to 7*.
*: lots of UI/UX and applied psychology papers say this is about the best number of discrete options to give people, before they’re too limited or too choice-fatigued.
@John for people asking yes-no questions, I think it should also be on the writer of that post to ask a better question? For the gamifying thing (like what @JosABanks said), though, you do have a good point; I’m also a fan of having a max word limit just to force people to be concise.
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A character max is interesting yet can easily be worked around with multiple posts. I find when people post “Twitter threads” to be very annoying. When someone goes on a rant or running thought across 18 tweets, they have missed the point of the platform.
At the same time though, I can choose to skim a long post. (I do this a lot cause with my moderator hat on, I kind of feel I need to skim/read everything)
Concise yet thoughtful discourse is the ultimate goal here so over time, I want to keep that going using the site’s settings as things sway long or short. As we approach the Community’s 1 year birthday (May 18 BTW) I feel the settings have given us that. I know I’m happy with the results so far and I hope others are too, even with a few minor quirks. 
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