If this feature is in part meant to address the problems of 1) threads often ending without people knowing why and 2) people feeling bad about receiving certain kinds of criticism or about certain critics because it’s costly to both respond and not respond, I would suggest adding the following reactions:
I plan to respond later.
I’m not planning to respond. (On second thought this could be left out, as it would be implied if someone gave a reaction without also giving “I plan to respond later.”)
I don’t understand.
I disagree. (Similar to “wrong” but I think I prefer this wording.)
It’s probably not worth the time to resolve this.
I wish this thread would continue. (Could be used to remind someone to respond, or when you see an interesting thread that ended too early.)
Maybe too hard but it might be nice to have somewhere you can go to see all the comments you’ve reacted “I plan to respond later” to that you haven’t yet responded to.
Maybe also a reminder about the comments to which you’ve reacted with that. E.g., if you haven’t replied in a week or so (could be configured per user or something)
A commitment to reply is a commitment, not following through on it is a source of guilt, which motivates intuitively avoiding the situations that might cause it, not necessarily with sane blame-assignment. So the best place to prevent this phenomenon is at the stage of not making unnecessary commitments. Convenience is a key thing that influences what actually happens frequently, without limiting the options. Thus a non-coercive intervention would be to make unnecessary commitments less convenient. Your proposal has an element that’s the opposite of that, making unnecessary commitments more convenient.
This seems a reasonable consideration, but doesn’t change my desire to experiment with having the new feature, since there are potential benefits that could outweigh the downside that you describe. (Not sure if you meant to indicate an overall disagreement, or just want to point out this additional consideration.) And if the downside turns out to be a significant issue, it could be ameliorated by clarifying that “I plan to reply later” should be interpreted not as a commitment but just indication of current state of mind.
I also have a strong personal rule against making public time-bound commitments unless I need to. I generally regret it because unexpected things come up and I feel guilty about not replying in the time frame I thought I would.
I might be inclined to hit a button that says “I hope to respond further to this”.
This is important! Understanding when to react, when to reply, and when to do both is very difficult. The current reactions are not well-designed to take the place of a reply, only to augment (or replace?) some values of the karma and agree/disagree buttons.
If this feature is in part meant to address the problems of 1) threads often ending without people knowing why and 2) people feeling bad about receiving certain kinds of criticism or about certain critics because it’s costly to both respond and not respond, I would suggest adding the following reactions:
I plan to respond later.
I’m not planning to respond. (On second thought this could be left out, as it would be implied if someone gave a reaction without also giving “I plan to respond later.”)
I don’t understand.
I disagree. (Similar to “wrong” but I think I prefer this wording.)
It’s probably not worth the time to resolve this.
I wish this thread would continue. (Could be used to remind someone to respond, or when you see an interesting thread that ended too early.)
Maybe too hard but it might be nice to have somewhere you can go to see all the comments you’ve reacted “I plan to respond later” to that you haven’t yet responded to.
Probably not that hard.
Maybe also a reminder about the comments to which you’ve reacted with that. E.g., if you haven’t replied in a week or so (could be configured per user or something)
Unnecessary commitments are still a source of guilt, should be less convenient.
Not sure I understand. Please explain more? Also do you have a concrete suggestion or change you’d like to see?
A commitment to reply is a commitment, not following through on it is a source of guilt, which motivates intuitively avoiding the situations that might cause it, not necessarily with sane blame-assignment. So the best place to prevent this phenomenon is at the stage of not making unnecessary commitments. Convenience is a key thing that influences what actually happens frequently, without limiting the options. Thus a non-coercive intervention would be to make unnecessary commitments less convenient. Your proposal has an element that’s the opposite of that, making unnecessary commitments more convenient.
This seems a reasonable consideration, but doesn’t change my desire to experiment with having the new feature, since there are potential benefits that could outweigh the downside that you describe. (Not sure if you meant to indicate an overall disagreement, or just want to point out this additional consideration.) And if the downside turns out to be a significant issue, it could be ameliorated by clarifying that “I plan to reply later” should be interpreted not as a commitment but just indication of current state of mind.
I also have a strong personal rule against making public time-bound commitments unless I need to. I generally regret it because unexpected things come up and I feel guilty about not replying in the time frame I thought I would.
I might be inclined to hit a button that says “I hope to respond further to this”.
This is important! Understanding when to react, when to reply, and when to do both is very difficult. The current reactions are not well-designed to take the place of a reply, only to augment (or replace?) some values of the karma and agree/disagree buttons.