Talk:Like button

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 19 January 2022 and 13 May 2022. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Terence9915 (article contribs). Peer reviewers: Prss98, Man6506.

Proposal to merge to Facebook

I was late in knowing about the outcome of the deletion request, which happened to be closed with "no consensus". I actually would like to disagree on the ruling after looking through the nomination. Sure as hell, there isn't a strong consensus to deletion, but there is a clear consensus to merging. Fluttershy !xmcuvg2MH 19:13, 24 December 2011 (UTC)

I'd rather see this article to be expanded in scope to also over e.g. Google's +1 button. If that's done it wouldn't be appropriate to merge this into Facebook anymore. —Ruud 12:23, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

And the idea of "upvote" in general which has been around since Slashdot. – Pnm (talk) 03:54, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

OSNews uses a "Recommend this article" button, and writes the amount of votes under every article. Som other sites do that. The feature is very generic. — Dmitrij D. Czarkoff (talk) 08:44, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

Do you understand that Facebook's Like button refers not just to a user interface element on Facebook.com, but also to sharing functionality that's integrated into a number of prominent, participating websites? It has an impact beyond Facebook.com and the amount of secondary-source coverage merits a separate article. Where would this content even go in Facebook? Add a couple sentences, sure, but leave this article be. The rationale for merge was that it's not notable, which it obviously is. – Pnm (talk) 03:54, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

The article describes the feature that is not exclusive to Facebook. No grounds for merge. — Dmitrij D. Czarkoff (talk) 08:44, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

I opose the merge. The 'like' button has become a social phenomenom. It's often used in advertising, protests and has become easily identifiable.--TinTin (talk) 02:55, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

Oppose merge. As silly as I think the whole thing is, the "like button" is ubiquitous, and certainly not exclusive to Facebook. Joefromrandb (talk) 15:51, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

Any discussion re:FB like icon? In Iran and Iraq, "a gesture involving exposing only the thumb in a vertical orientation—a thumbs up—is" considered obscene supposedly. 192.122.237.11 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 14:04, 11 April 2013 (UTC)

Number of Likes per day, per year

Citation 11 points to a marking sites that sells FB Likes. The site doesn't state where it got the numbers from. Sounds like something that should be removed, thoughts? 71.202.183.112 (talk) 08:41, 14 April 2013 (UTC)CAH

Sweepstakes

According to the part Fake Likes Facebook does not permit purchased "likes", but some companies have sweepstakes, where you have to use the Facebook like button to participate and it seems that facebook doesn't have a problem with this. I think this should also be mentioned in the Fake Likes part because it is quite similar to purchasing likes, because it will also make many people click the like button because they want to get some kind of advantage, the only difference is that the advantage is the chance to win some price instead of money. --MrBurns (talk) 02:23, 1 February 2014 (UTC)

Consistency of style in referring to Like buttons, etc.

Throughout the article, I see at least three different ways to refer to the subject: the like button, the Like button, and the "like" button. We should pick one style and stick to it. I propose we use the style most popular among denizens of each site and/or the official style used by each site. In general, that means no quotes and that we use the uppercase for the first letter of common words, but that we leave invented words all lowercase. In specific, that means we refer to Facebook's Like button, Google's +1 button, Slashdot's and Reddit's upvote and downvote buttons, etc. Similarly, we'd refer to the act as Liking or upvoting and talk of things a user has Liked or upvoted.

Unless someone else has a better standard, I'll make this change eventually (for a probably large, possibly infinite, value of "eventually"). MacMog (talk) 09:20, 28 November 2014 (UTC)

This page was mostly about Facebook's like button, so I forked content

I know there was a deletion discussion at Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Like_button in 2011, with some people saying to merge this with Facebook. At this point, there are lots of sources covering the Facebook like button.

A problem with this page now is that this page is not distinguishing between articles about Facebook's like button, other websites' like buttons, and the general concept of a like button. I just forked the Facebook like button content into its own article. Even though that is most of this article, I thought that should be the content to move because the original concept for this article was to generally cover the topic, and because I did not want to move the deletion discussion, and because I think the sub-topic should be moved away from the main topic.

I think there are enough sources here to justify having an article just on like buttons, especially if there is also content about other sites' like buttons. I also found some other sources but I think this would be easy to work at after splitting off content which is not about the general concept of a "like button" and which only applies to Facebook. Blue Rasberry (talk) 23:20, 13 February 2015 (UTC)

Digg.com

So it is mentioned that Digg.com predated Vimeo, but why does it not have its own section?

Pouët.net

Users were allowed to share their valence structurally towards a posted artwork on the social demoscene discussion board Pouët since 2001 by allowing to tag it with thumbs up (like) or thumbs down (dislike). The site introduced aggregate reaction counts in 2004 for thumbs up, thumbs down, unrated (also referred to as "piggy") and overall valence. Such reactions are also logged on the user profile, facilitating new user connections and recommendations. -Bkil (talk

[...] anonymously voting thumbs up/down sounds similar but distinct -User:Lord_Belbury

Could you care to clarify what you mean by that? You can't like/dislike a prod anonymously and you can either like or dislike it once, i.e., you can't stuff the ballots, because your rating is tied to your identity. Would it need to show your name when you hover on the aggregate top counters to qualify according to your viewpoint? What is the definition if a like button in the first place? I seem to lack that. -bkil (talk) 11:09, 10 April 2022 (UTC)

We could reduce OR by linking to a discussion where they have announced thumbs up/down, although still not an independent source: https://www.pouet.net/topic.php?which=54&page=1 I haven't found further mentions about it because the internet was very small and the site was not very popular back then, but some magazines might provide a reference if one researched further (perhaps paper ones?).

FAQ
:: general :: why is there a pig for the neutral vote ?
The pigface 🐽 is the equivalent of meh.
The goal was to shame people who commented a production without putting a clear binary judgement. Circa 2000, when the site was born, anal0gue thought crystal clear opinions (like/dislike) were easier to process, and would trigger more conversations ("Why U hate what I love!?"). As it stands now, the pig stuck but it's perfectly okay to vote neutrally.
https://www.pouet.net/faq.php#faq51

-bkil (talk) 11:24, 10 April 2022 (UTC)

To be clearer, I didn't respond to a talk page thread by writing one sentence in lowercase, that was a quote of an edit summary I posted of "WP:OR without a secondary source, anonymously voting thumbs up/down sounds similar but distinct". It's better if we can quote a secondary source that's described it as such, rather than making the call ourselves and opening up the article to further and further archive.org examples of old websites that had some kind of content voting systems.

And yeah, you're right, it would be good to have a clearer definition in the article, beyond "express that they like, enjoy or support certain content". I feel like the key is that when I click a like button, it's filing that somewhere where another user can see a list of things I liked (whether that's in a rolling news feed of all their friends, or on my profile), rather than it being an anonymous vote on something. What good definitions are out there in sources? --Lord Belbury (talk) 11:48, 10 April 2022 (UTC)

I agree that it would be better if we could cite a secondary source. You seem to be mistaken. I've just explained above that pouet is a live social networking site (one of the first social networking sites as well - not just a "random old archive.org site" from the 90's) - you have your own profile where your activities are shown, including your thumbs up/down, comments, posts and whatever: https://www.pouet.net/user.php?who=8788 So if you reconsider, have I addressed all your concerns? Do you agree that it's not "anonymous voting"? -bkil (talk) 12:01, 10 April 2022 (UTC)

A reliable secondary source would seem like the bare minimum for whether or not any given website should be written about here. --Lord Belbury (talk) 09:04, 30 April 2022 (UTC)

References

Why does "dislike button" redirect here?

I feel like the dislike button should have its own page, as the like button mostly only talks about the like button, not the dislike button. Also since the two are completely opposite. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Setarip (talk • contribs) 23:20, 29 April 2022 (UTC)

If you can reference articles about it, I agree that it would be considered a separate concept. Pouet also had a dislike button long before others. However, I think it would be much easier to find general articles about reactji-based feedback/rating in social networks, their variety, aggregating counts, their features regarding anonymity, visibility under the profile of the user, multiple-choice, etc. -bkil (talk) 00:44, 30 April 2022 (UTC)

Patent? Infringement(s)?

In the LinkedIn article, it says "In July 2012 LinkedIn acquired 15 key Digg patents for $4 million including a "click a button to vote up a story" patent" (linking to this article here). Um, What?? Seriously??

So, has anyone sued over other sites' use of this?

Perhaps a full HISTORY of up-voting should be included, if editors can dig into that.

Don't forget to include PRODIGY (1984 ff.), AOL (1985/1989 ff.), CompuServe (1969 or 1980s), thousands of local dial-up [[Bulletin board system|BBSes], Usenet, and Usenet groups (1980s, I guess) which together were quite a thing before the WWW/Internet/Websites took over. But Digg/digg wasn't even founded until November 2004! There must have been +1 (up-voting) types of scenarios in several of those long before it was even a company.

So WHY did the Patent office award such a nonsensical patent to Digg? (And if there weren't any lawsuits, I can certainly see why: Digg would likely lose—both that *and* their patent!)

If there were a lawsuit – or even a "cease and desist letter", or maybe even Digg trying to gouge money out of a company for using a button to up-vote, vote up, or let it's users click Like on some story or post – then this might be notable in this article. Of course, such letters might not be public....

Anyone?

Misty MH (talk) 03:51, 16 October 2022 (UTC)

If you scroll up just a little, I have answered your questions right here: [1] bkil (talk) 17:54, 26 February 2023 (UTC)

Wiki Education assignment: English Composition 2

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 5 January 2023 and 29 April 2023. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): LoremIpsum0101 (article contribs).

— Assignment last updated by LoremIpsum0101 (talk) 14:36, 5 February 2023 (UTC)

Compare rating features of platforms on a chart

Should we provide an overview of various features in a tabular form?

• date of introduction for the feature
• subject: a visitor - registered or not
• object: to rate a content item - UGC or not
• variety: either in a binary fashion, numerically or via a limited set of reactions
• visibility: for themselves, for their circles to see or publicly
• activity: whether this action appears as a distinctive event on our profile for others to see
• aggregation: whether total reaction counts are shown when viewing each item

bkil (talk) 20:36, 26 February 2023 (UTC)

Separate social widgets vs. collaborative rating systems

Information within this article and in the related ones of Facebook Platform#Social plugins and Facebook like button#Public seem to be ill factored. I can see lots of talk about the "like" or rating feature available within the social networking service or UGC platform. What I am missing is a page (or sections and subsections?) dedicated to social media widgets such as ones used for sharing and/or rating ("liking") a given external webpage using the given platform. This can be implemented in multiple ways:

• A JavaScript Bookmarklet that a visitor installs on their client
• Some HTML snippet that the web developer of each such page includes, containing at least an anchor and usually some decoration around it, an elaborate JavaScript library or a sandboxed iframe.

The list of platforms whose widget of the latter kind had gained notable worldwide deployment is small, so it would be feasible to discuss each one in detail. bkil (talk) 20:46, 26 February 2023 (UTC)

Edition Suggestion

Hello as part of a class project we have to edit a Wikipedia page. The one I picked was this one. The main thing that I would like to add is about the social and psychological impacts that likes can have on people, especially in today's society. I was wondering if this is a worth change or if there is anything else that would be better to add in this page?

LoremIpsum0101 (talk) 17:48, 19 March 2023 (UTC)

Hi. Please have a look into the already existing issues named in the main article and on this talk page first. I feel that your topic seems to be covered pretty well by various other articles, but feel free to clarify if you disagree: Facebook criticism#Psychological/sociological effects, Facebook like button#Criticism, Clickjacking, Digital media use and mental health, Bandwagon effect, Consumerism -bkil (talk) 18:39, 19 March 2023 (UTC)

Watchlists

Though different, watchlists and like buttons have some similarities. I suggest there would be value in the See Also section to mention watchlists.

One advantage I like about my watchlist is it reminds me of wiki pages I like and want to go back to. It woks across browsers and devices. CuriousMarkE (talk) 03:47, 22 March 2023 (UTC)

Tariq 2407:D000:D:142B:5CCE:83E8:AF8E:3A2C (talk) 13:23, 28 January 2024 (UTC)

The Peter Dislike Show

I'd like to comment about the reverting of The Peter Dislike Show. This is a channel with 1,600+ subscribers and a big part of the "dislike" culture and protest about YouTube removing dislike counts. Please consider adding it back. 72.183.28.159 (talk) 16:13, 6 April 2024 (UTC)

Did it get any coverage in reliable sources? Belbury (talk) 16:54, 6 April 2024 (UTC)

https://frdanielword.wordpress.com/author/frdanielword/ — Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.12.119.148 (talk) 21:31, 6 April 2024 (UTC)

That's just somebody's blog. Did any books or news websites write about it? --Belbury (talk) 09:19, 7 April 2024 (UTC)