Language, emoji or otherwise, will find a way. My GenZ son says that 
is only ever meant ironically. No amount of emoji curation can stop that.
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I was being tongue-in-cheek when I said this, but since you’ve asked for feedback, I do genuinely think that having multiple ways to indicate a “like” doesn’t really add anything but visual clutter. I think the only one I’d actually use is the laugh one.
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Keeping just the one old “like” reaction would also be fine by me.
The only thing with it is that sometimes people use it to signal support of the person posting even though the post is about something bad that happened, which can be confusing if you don’t know that’s how it’s being used. But we seem to have coped with it ok so far.
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I agree with opinion of previous speakers, that the new reactions cause some “visual clutter” and are unneeded. I liked the simple heart reaction. It’s now harder to simply like the post, even on desktop PC using mouse. (not to mention the mobile devices). But it’s the only thing I disprefer in new layout.
My daughters say that when you end a sentence with a full stop in a short written communication, it means you deliberately want to show that the tone of your message is dry and cold. Of course, as a worthy representative of the generation that understands nothing about life, I reply that, on reflection, that might well be the case.
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Definitely. My wife had to drill this into my head lest I offend people.
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From a moderation perspective, I imagine it could cause some minor headaches. (Are mods going to do anything about inappropriate emoji reactions? Is this going to be in the CoC? Is it even possible for reactions to be flagged for moderation?)
I’m not saying it can’t possibly work–it’s just something to consider.
even in my old man circles, thumbs up is not really a friendly response
Yes, but you’re a very hip old man.
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I wanted to reply with a single, very cool emoji, but discourse did not allow it. I must be more hip than discourse, at least.
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I literally only use thumbs up 
but never sarcastically- if I wanted to be sarcastic/ironic I might use 
…
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My suggestions:
The bottom row of emoji, excluding 
(and 
but I think is a better alternative) seem redundant as they stand.
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If we’re going to have multiple types of like buttons, I would prefer single word descriptions to emoji that could mean almost anything… Another forum I’m on has distinct like, agree, informative, and useful buttons on each post, for example.
Admittedly, I rarely interact with such systems, and the hover over description in the OP makes me think the new system probably doesn’t work well, if at all, with keyboard input and just makes the footer of each post harder to parse as my screen reader reads it.
Also, I’m from a time when the common term was smilies or emoticons and they were limited to variations of smiley faces and sometimes more complicated things related to a forum’s theme and built into a forum’s specific dialect of BBcode rather than there being a huge chunk of unicode dedicated to modern hieroglyphs that can be used basically anywhere… plus, I’m pretty sure I went blind before emoji entered the English vernacular(though I assume the word originates as a Japanese style abbreviation of a compound word), and the darn things haven’t always read well and some people have a bad habit of trying to communicate entirely in emoji, so count them as a thing I don’t like about the modern Internet.
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is a good alternative; appreciation for a thought-prowoking message.
Best regards from Italy,
dott. Piergiorgio.
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The Wikipedia article on emoji is interesting. For instance,
Originally meaning pictograph, the word emoji comes from Japanese e (絵; ‘picture’) + moji (文字; ‘character’);[4] the resemblance to the English words emotion and emoticon is purely coincidental.[5] The first emoji sets were created by Japanese portable electronic device companies in the late 1980s and the 1990s.
Another interesting tidbit from the article is that emoticons date back to 1982!
I think that emoticons appeared first in early usenet, e-mails. I met them when using Public Domain software from 1980s, like Haktar (which is a IF system). Guido Wegener used emoticons in its documentation.
That’s sad. At work the shortcut in chat is (y) and thumbs up basically means “acknowledged”. Also thumbs-up been co-opted as kind of a MAGA thing, less said about that the better. Also I similarly fear the ‘ok’ hand signal is now a dog whistle…anyway.
That’s weird. Punctuation is kind of important, but I know the young-ins are picky about their communications. I have had kids who are like “why do u capitalize words its so formal lol” I can also write in cursive if I choose to - begone child, back to your pokemons and friendship bracelets without a care in your tiny head.
I personally need to avoid reflexively ending all my sentences online with exclamation points - to the original point I tend to do it to indicate enthusiasm which the period sometimes does not convey. I did actually break myself of double-spacing after every period as drilled in typing class. We used to use mechanical machines to produce typed text on paper. We didn’t have screens when I was young, and we walked to school backwards in the sn- [crumbles to dust]
Goodness, no, no, not really. That’s why we want to avoid a “dislike” reaction to discourage trolling. The blue-heart and open-mouth surprise and eyebrow raised are the reactions I personally would want to use in lieu of a reply to sometime thing “my heart is blue for you” or “oh, surprising” or “you kids, get off the lawn”. Eyebrow raised is as negative as I personally would want.
We do have one user who requested an interface that hides all likes. It’s difficult to do both, though somewhat accomplishable via themes.
I get “hug” - would that be better than the blue heart? I like the concept of hug but I never actually like the design of any hug emoji and it’s confusing if you see it but don’t know what it is.
“google eyes” to me kind of communicates the same as “oh wow”.
I like considering-face, that implies “I need to think about your comment” or “interesting…”
I’m unsure of up-arrow as it seems to duplicate thumbs up - or is it “I agree with what’s above”?
My other favorite emoji I love using personally is 
It conveys “I’m not mad, I’m disappointed…” but may be too negative.
Consider this potential reaction block (the normal like-heart will always be available) :
Which would kind of give the positive to only-mildly-negative range of
“yeah/okay/good job/I’m not comfortable with hearts”
“I agree/cosign/completely right/100%”
“What you said amused me”
“Congratulations!/You win/Best post in thread”
“Friendship/consoling/comfort/it’ll be okay”
“Interesting…/need to think about it/good question”
“Unimpressed/maybe not/unsure”
“Great idea/I’m inspired”
Unfortunately there’s not a lantern, the unofficial symbol of all IF, so light-bulb is the closest to that sentiment.
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and are commonly used on the Neo-Interactives Discord server, so I imagine their usecases would carry over to here.
and just seemed nice to have.
I like your suggestions but I would rather have 
than and than since they’re more versatile.
and/or 
might make good nuanced laughing emojis, too, in addition to or 
or (which serve similar purposes).
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The reaction so far has been somewhat more mixed than I’d expected.
Don’t take this as a binding referendum or anything, but—how do you feel about these new reactions?
- Yes! Keep having multiple options (though maybe not these exact ones)!
- No! Go back to a single red heart for “like”.
- I don’t really care either way.
0
voters
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I do not personally favor the new feature for two reasons: (1) the potential for ambiguously passive-aggressive usage that people have mentioned above, and (2) it feels aesthetically like a Facebookification of the forum interface. I mean, maybe that doesn’t matter that much! I’m sure I’ll get acclimated to it one way or another, but my impulse is to dislike the additional visual clutter being tacked onto an otherwise pretty streamlined reading experience.
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