Following your feedback, we have made a small tweak to the “like” button.
Instead of the thumbs-up icon, likes will now show as hearts (which we think is lovely - no pun intended!)
The heart icon is already used in our app, so it is now more consistent, but more importantly, the level of support that’s shared across HealthUnlocked is phenomenal, and the thumbs-up icon just wasn’t quite cutting it anymore. We hope you agree that the heart icon is a more empathetic and appropriate response to the experiences that are shared here.
Let us know if you love it (sorry!) or hate it in the comments below, or if you would like to see any other icons/emojis included when reacting to posts or replies.
Love is a higher degree of enthusiasm than a Like - and If someone has posted a message about struggling, I would really not want to "Love" it. There are also certain comments or Members who I would definitely not want to comment with a Heart to.
I will be far less likely to use this button - so in effect will interact less with posts that I am not actually commenting to. I may even have to go back to some posts I have "Liked" and remove my "Love" for them.
Of course, Facebook has both a Like and a Heart as well as a few others - so you can react more appropriately.
Very good points? A 'Like' is equivalent to an 'OK'. Any more depth of response is more likely to prompt a lengthier reply - which is what we want everywhere on Health Unlocked? 😶
I agree with Hidden , you have made a good argument against using the heart icon.
In my opinion a heart can be interpreted in many ways. To love/like a post, to let someone know that your heart goes out to them, to let someone know that you share their concerns... using the thumbs up when someone has just posted that their partner has died seems very insensitive. A heart on the other hand can convey empathy...
No one icon will cover all eventualities but a heart for me is more personal and conveys more emotion.
I agree with the above two posters (not the 1st one). My first thought was ugh! I thought maybe I was just being a misery! I personally don't want to love anyone's post, just agree with them or signal that someone's response is a good one ! I feel reassured that there are others who feel the heart is not appropriate.
Not for me. I'm happy to Like posts but there are very few I'd Love, and if I did feel strongly I'd reply with a positive message.
You mention the app: it frequently causes confusion as it doesn't give access to all areas of the forum: maybe that would be a priority for any tech tweaks.
Or the ability to add pictures within thread, rather than just in the opening post.
It seems to be the answer to a question that wasn't asked.
Members have already commented that a ‘love’ heart should be red not blue.
Personally, I press ‘like’ as an affirmation of support or an agreement on content. When members are posting details of their battles with an incurable blood cancer on our site, I’d feel very awkward about ‘loving’ the content particularly if they’re posting bad news.
Which is why I hate the ‘how did this post make you feel’ feature.
Some members express empathy by using the symbols of hugs and kisses/love to express "I feel for you".
However, I think it could be better to have a different range of expressions, like "thank you" (for a valuable, interesting resource), "empathy" (I feel you), "sad" (for when there are some sad news) and maybe more.
Sometimes I can't like a reply because I feel "that's terrible" and I don't have a way of acknowledging the response.
This is just a quick suggestion and I would need to think of ideas while responding to posts.
I like your suggestions. This love button is all or nothing, but your suggestions echo how I feel, that there should be a range. Sometimes, someone posts such a thorough response I don't feel I can add anything to it, and liking it doesn't really say that. I usually write saying I support it. However, a button for "great answer " would save a lot of time.
Another (non-medical/health) forum I frequent has this range of options:
Like
Dislike
Agree
Disagree
Informative
Useful
Big grin
It feels a bit awkward if all options are positive - but so often I'd rather see people just ignore rather than slap a negative onto a post. (At least in the context of a support forum.)
Yep! Totally agree with this. I have left a forum because of the sheer volume of negative comments. Support forums should have positive comments, although I take your point about all options not being positive on other types of forum.
I'm happy to like lots of posts, but I love very few. Many people post to try and get advice/support as they have a problem, loving the post is not appropriate in these situations.
Hi Laura, to be perfectly honest? No, I don't think it is a good idea at all. It seems way over the top.
I may like a post or a reply, because I happen to agree with them, or otherwise like the content, because I find it helpful, informative, encouraging, not necessarily for me personally, but to the community as a whole.
But I do not LOVE it.
If I think that a post/reply is really outstanding, I might post a reply, but otherwise, the 'thumbs up' is perfectly adequate; it says 'yeah, I agree with you mate', and that's it.
On the other hand, the heart symbol, in this instance, just seems excessive, and to be frank? it just looks out of place and almost phony.
I am actually surprised that the members were not consulted on this, as this is something we use all the time.
You couldn't possibly reconsider, could you?
IMHO, it would be so much more important to sort out the totally inadequate new "members search". Whoever implemented it, have they ever actually tried to use it??
Sorry Laura, but I have to agree with nearly everyone else. I really don't like 'love'. I've got used to 'like' though often even that's not really appropriate. A range of expressions would be better, as in Nathalie99 's response, otherwise I'll just go back to commenting on a post. I can't imagine many instances where I'd want to love someone's post or reply.
Bearing in mind that they have now decided to go ahead and count the hearts, I think this would have been a better option, to give both, then it would have been easier to see which one people use more rather than as someone said below, we now only have one option.
Seems like (as would be expected), we need a choice of icons/emojis available for us to choose from. The response to this change just shows how impossible it is to find just one symbol to represent our feedback to a wide range of post topics in over 700 communities supporting a very diverse range of health interests.
Laura, I can see the biggest positive of this change is that it will encourage more members to reply to a post - provided they have the time .
Was it really something worth bothering with? Was it worth the time put into it? A simple 'Like' can be used to acknowledge/show approval of a post, and if anything more is needed, we can write a response.
At first I thought it was a good idea but having read others replies that it is inappropriate for the content of posts on this website I agree that we should stick with the thumbs up.
Something I would like added is to continue to see how many likes my replies have had when they are shown on my profile page not just whilst seen in the thread of communication.
I agree that this website is amazing for the support it provides so thanks alot.
There has always been ambiguity about reactions to responses.
When I have posted, I want to thank others for reading and making the effort to reply. I might, or might not, agree with them. And if the response is something like "Thank you for posting that helvella.", I really don't want to add another "Thank you for thanking me." response. But nor do I want to ignore it.
I have used "Like" for that purpose and hoped the recipient has taken it that way. But "Love" just goes too, too far.
I've often wanted an "Appreciate you taking time to respond." option. If there ever is a possibility of multiple reactions, please include that.
Heart is not always appropriate. If there isn't a drop down option to choose between feelings 👍🙂🙁😡😰❤ probably best to stick to LIKE. Sorry, good intentions though - Thank you.
I would agree with posts I have read, I do think heart over does it. I used the "Likes" to show agreement, not love.
Interestingly, the heart is beside a ‘Like’ word... shouldn’t it be ‘Love’?
I agreed with Laura’s post title: All you need is love. Love ‘like’’, love ‘agree’, love ‘disagree’, love ‘interesting’, love science. love support, love ‘love’.
So... I love to disagree with you, but as an Aspie I’d love to see a ‘Hug’ button. You see, it’s easier for me to hug people virtually 🤗
Many of us use this site for research to help us formulate decisions on:
should I or shouldn't I
would this be better than that
does this work or doesn't it
what happens afterwards
which course of action yields the best quality of life
Those discussions and citations within posts give us much helpful info, but often necessarily contain a review of horrific -- and sometimes tragic -- results. We LIKE those posts because they provide fodder for our decision-making. It's impossible to LOVE them because of the subject matter and post content.
Men cannot LOVE talking about removing a prostate or testicle any more than women can LOVE talking about removing a breast.
Thank you for the effort to be more accommodating. It was well intentioned. However, in a forum such as this, posts evoke a broad range of emotions. Therein lies the conundrum. But then too many options makes things fuzzy. We can add our own emojis if we like. "Like" worked for me most of the time, but not when I wanted to express sympathy or support for someone going through a hard time. Also, I have wanted to simply express appreciation for a post, especially when someone has done some digging for information.
Thank you all for your feedback, we have taken it onboard. It’s great to see so many of you sharing your thoughts.
We will be monitoring the metrics of the like feature to see if the icon change affects how it's used. This is a method we use a lot at HU, changes are initiated by feedback and numbers. So it's great to coincide these numbers with direct feedback.
We did this previously way back in 2014 when the button was changed from 'Recommend' to 'Like'. Initially this yielded some feedback that 'Like' was too strong of an emotion and faired too similar to social networks. The metrics showed that the feature was being used far more when comparing it to Recommend, and so we changed it indefinitely. There was a 84% increase in the number of clicks and a 92% increase in the number of people who used the feature. A pretty big improvement!
There is room for improvement and we would love to offer more than one way of expressing your emotions to a post or reply, as this would solve the concerns you have shared. Leave it with us and we'll investigate 💪
For now, we will keep an eye on how the feature is being used and the numbers and give you an update here in a few weeks time!
Well, without another option to signify acknowledgement without making a reply, you'll probably get the figures you want, but to interpret that as approval would be stretching it a bit when we have no alternative
I'm getting the usual number of likes I get on a Sunday (which is a busy day for me on the forum) and I would guess most people haven't noticed and, if they have, there is no alternative. Not much of a popularity test, is it?
The Recommend option reads distinctly differently to Like.
I would tend only to Recommend when I want to suggest others read the response or post.
I often Like as an indication to the person who posted/responded.
Yes, obviously, there is overlap and ambiguity. But changing what something actually means is a different thing to expressing what it means in different words.
I agree. Like is a sufficiently neutral word to cover various intentions. I mainly use it as an acknowledgement when someone has replied to me, or has given support to another member.
I'm finding it tedious to avoid clicking on Like, now, but I know that doing so will be interpreted as approving of that heart
Honestly though, how can the 'metrics' have any meaning to them if you only give us one choice: that blinking heart!
As other members have noted, in reply to Bridge Girl, we now click on the heart certainly not because we love it...but only because we have no other choice.
To have meaningful metrics, leave the thumbs-up in place, as well as the new heart....
Only then will you be able to learn what the membership prefers.
The only way I can show my dislike for this move is to personally stop using the only option of the heart. Which I will have to do. And therefore it will appear that I am not interacting with, or not reading, Member’s posts.
So be it. (And I will not be offended if you do not ❤️ me).
That is what I have decided to do also, hence " not loving it" . However, I fear we will be in the minority since so few people have seen this post in relation to the numbers actually using HU. If they had pinned it to each forum, then maybe it would have given more people food for thought?
I can see your point, MissisB, but to tell you the truth, I would find it difficult not to acknowledge a post/reply to which I really want to give the 'thumbs up'.
Besides, as CarpeDiem points out, HU did not pin it to each forum.
In this way they have ascertained that resistance would be greatly minimized.
I therefore doubt that 'abstaining' will have a major effect, and the bods who installed the heart, would still get their 'positive' blooming metrics....as artificial and non-representative as they might be!
This whole thing makes me wonder, what is it exactly that they are trying to prove? Where did this desire for "loving" something more than "liking it" come from (Perhaps they work for McDonalds on the side?- joking of course!!!)? I must say I don't understand the thinking behind it. Anyway, based on what Laura says happened before, it looks as if our thoughts will become an idea some of us explored, but everyone else remained oblivious to and so it became a "thing". I too want to acknowledge peoples' posts, but will live in hope of the return of the thumbs up.
I believe in the principle of KISS (Keep It Short and Simple) so why not remove the option of “like” or “love” and just let us reply to a post. That way we are not showing any emotion towards a post and the content of the reply will determine if the post is liked or hated. If it is thought necessary to show how many have read the post then use a symbol of a book. This site is beginning to resemble Facebook or Instagram with emojis indicating like, love, funny, sad or angry. We’ll be having an image of red lips next indicating kisses next!
Really it doesn't say love this post it says: ♡ Like this post, so is quite innocuous.
My concern was it might encourage the lonely hearts, but I think that it is friendly and is understood across the world so it's grown on me.
I'm sorry to disagree with some here but its not racist sexist ageist unfriendly or offensive so let's take it in the spirit that it was meant, as to represent...Like ♡
Have HU had chance to read through all these replies Hidden ? I am not using the ❤️ for the reasons expressed above and would welcome a return to the thumbs up. After a week I would hope you could check the biometrics, although with no alternative I suspect most people are still using the ❤️ as they haven’t noticed
This is what the blue emoji represents:
💙 Blue Heart
I have full confidence in you! Represents platonic love, faithfulness, loyalty and friendship.
Thanks for explaining the changes. I have been considering my thoughts on it, and realise that essentially I don't think I've paid too much attention to the 'symbols' in the past - and have clicked on the 'like' button because it says 'Like' - i.e. I think I paid attention to the semantics of the word, rather than the potential meaning of any symbols next to it.
However, I do find that since the change has been made, that I actually do genuinely 'like' the heart symbol, and personally prefer it to the thumb's up symbol. I don't regard my pressing of that button as meaning that I 'love' a person or necessarily 'love' what they are saying, but when I press it, I do 'like it' and 'acknowledge it' and I feel the heart symbol represents something positive. I am certainly continuing to use it.
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