Simple Machines Community Forum

SMF Development => Feature Requests => Topic started by: jsx on December 08, 2021, 09:52:15 AM

Title: Suggestion to change the display of likes in SMF 2.1
Post by: jsx on December 08, 2021, 09:52:15 AM
Hi,

In SMF 2.1, the post shows (link): 1 person likes this. 2 people like this and so on, but I think it would be better if users who liked the post were shown immediately. In this way the likes are displayed in the Invision Community software. Example: Username, Username2, Username3 and 7 others likes this. XenForo also displays the names of users who have liked a post in the same way. ElkArte also has a simple method; Liked by: Username, Username2

What do you think about it?
Title: Re: Suggestion to change the display of likes in SMF 2.1
Post by: Doug Heffernan on December 08, 2021, 09:59:47 AM
Quote from: jsx on December 08, 2021, 09:52:15 AMHi,

In SMF 2.1, the post shows (link): 1 person likes this. 2 people like this and so on, but I think it would be better if users who liked the post were shown immediately. In this way the likes are displayed in the Invision Community software. Example: Username, Username2, Username3 and 7 others likes this. XenForo also displays the names of users who have liked a post in the same way. ElkArte also has a simple method; Liked by: Username, Username2

What do you think about it?

I like this idea. It is a better way imo of showing who liked a post. 
Title: Re: Suggestion to change the display of likes in SMF 2.1
Post by: Aleksi "Lex" Kilpinen on December 08, 2021, 10:37:02 AM
I think the idea has some merit, but I also fear it easily makes actually displaying the likes a lot more complex than it currently is really.
Title: Re: Suggestion to change the display of likes in SMF 2.1
Post by: Mick. on December 08, 2021, 10:49:35 AM
I looked into just showing an empty/full heart like Instagram with just the number of likes. But got distracted on something else lol
Title: Re: Suggestion to change the display of likes in SMF 2.1
Post by: jsx on December 08, 2021, 11:59:15 AM
Quote from: Doug Heffernan on December 08, 2021, 09:59:47 AMI like this idea. It is a better way imo of showing who liked a post. 

Exactly.

Quote from: Aleksi on December 08, 2021, 10:37:02 AMbut I also fear it easily makes actually displaying the likes a lot more complex than it currently is really.

Why do you think so?

There may be a problem with translating this information into other languages. I mean conjugation of the verb. Therefore It would be good if SMF 2.1 could display the names of users who liked the post in a simple way. So I think the Invision Community software and XenForo have it well done.

Invision Community

(https://i.imgur.com/T79Wjqh.png)

XenForo

(https://i.imgur.com/CLX7W2n.png)
Title: Re: Suggestion to change the display of likes in SMF 2.1
Post by: Aleksi "Lex" Kilpinen on December 08, 2021, 12:15:14 PM
Quote from: jsx on December 08, 2021, 11:59:15 AM
Quote from: Aleksi on December 08, 2021, 10:37:02 AMbut I also fear it easily makes actually displaying the likes a lot more complex than it currently is really.

Why do you think so?
Just thinking of the amount of data needed to form a page inside a topic.
Currently, you only need the total like counts for each post displayed on a topic page - until a user clicks on a counter and is then presented with likes for that individual post.

Showing screen names by default would have to mean loading also the user info for each like given to a single post, and this repeated for each post displayed on a topic page, and this repeated for each page load....
Title: Re: Suggestion to change the display of likes in SMF 2.1
Post by: Kindred on December 08, 2021, 05:21:02 PM
Addionally, changing a feature in such a major way, at this point in RC is not likely to happen
Title: Re: Suggestion to change the display of likes in SMF 2.1
Post by: jsx on December 09, 2021, 10:31:10 AM
The likes system in SMF 2.1 is the likes system that vbgamer45 created for SMF 2.0. @vbgamer45 would it be easy to make such a change? I don't mean it now, but sometime in the near future.

Quote from: Kindred on December 08, 2021, 05:21:02 PMAddionally, changing a feature in such a major way, at this point in RC is not likely to happen

I understand. I just added a suggestion, I think it's a good suggestion to change this layout one day, several SMF members liked my suggestion. So they support such a change.

Thanks to everyone who liked my suggestion. :)
Title: Re: Suggestion to change the display of likes in SMF 2.1
Post by: Diego Andrés on December 09, 2021, 12:30:18 PM
Quote from: jsx on December 09, 2021, 10:31:10 AMThe likes system in SMF 2.1 is the likes system that vbgamer45 created for SMF 2.0. @vbgamer45 would it be easy to make such a change? I don't mean it now, but sometime in the near future.

It's not the same... I think 2.1 was Arantor, not sure.
Title: Re: Suggestion to change the display of likes in SMF 2.1
Post by: live627 on December 10, 2021, 03:16:09 AM
vb created a likes system?
Title: Re: Suggestion to change the display of likes in SMF 2.1
Post by: jsx on December 10, 2021, 07:06:28 AM
Quote from: Diego Andrés on December 09, 2021, 12:30:18 PMIt's not the same... I think 2.1 was Arantor, not sure.

I understand, I thought it is the same system, because the information about who liked the post looks the same as in the vbgamer modification (https://custom.simplemachines.org/index.php?mod=3708). So I thought that this modification was adapted to SMF 2.1, therefore I wrote that it is the same system in 2.1
Title: Re: Suggestion to change the display of likes in SMF 2.1
Post by: jsx on December 28, 2021, 08:20:26 AM
This is a question for the people managing the SMF 2.1 project

What happens next with this suggestion and this one (https://www.simplemachines.org/community/index.php?topic=578244.0)? :)
Title: Re: Suggestion to change the display of likes in SMF 2.1
Post by: Kindred on December 28, 2021, 09:06:38 AM
it gets added to the backlog for consideration in future development branches.
It may get worked on....  it may not, depending on the discussions of the developers and the coding.

When the 3.0 branch opens for commits (after the release of 2.1), then external contributors may choose to submit code for the requested change
Title: Re: Suggestion to change the display of likes in SMF 2.1
Post by: jsx on December 28, 2021, 01:51:01 PM
We want this change in SMF 2.1, not in SMF 3.0, which is not known if it will come out at all and if it comes out, not earlier than in 5 years.
Title: Re: Suggestion to change the display of likes in SMF 2.1
Post by: Aleksi "Lex" Kilpinen on December 28, 2021, 02:01:33 PM
Not likely to happen in 2.1 at this point, but then that is what mods are for.
Title: Re: Suggestion to change the display of likes in SMF 2.1
Post by: jsx on December 28, 2021, 03:07:56 PM
I understand, maybe someone will release a mod. I think that as the people responsible for SMF 2.1 development, you should discuss this topic regarding the likes system in 2.1

Will you leave it as is, will you decide to cosmeticize this system in the near future in some 2.1.x release or just decide to release an official mod from SimpleMachines Team.
Title: Re: Suggestion to change the display of likes in SMF 2.1
Post by: Wellwisher on December 28, 2021, 03:53:08 PM
I disagree, I hope this doesn't happen. Forums need to look simple & clean. It's about doing away with unnecessary clutter. Imagine if social media websites began listing usernames as appose to tallying the numbers up? If a topic is popular, it could generate 100's of likes. Are users really going to read them? You're better off using that screen real-estate in a much more productive way.

Title: Re: Suggestion to change the display of likes in SMF 2.1
Post by: Kindred on December 28, 2021, 06:47:29 PM
It is unlikely to be an official mod

It is unlikely to go into 2.1.x

The next version for functionality enhancements is 3.0

If you want it in 2.1, then ask, perhaps pay, for a mod from one of the mid authors - unlikely to be the smf team
Title: Re: Suggestion to change the display of likes in SMF 2.1
Post by: jsx on December 29, 2021, 08:39:46 AM
Quote from: Wellwisher on December 28, 2021, 03:53:08 PMI disagree, I hope this doesn't happen. Forums need to look simple & clean. It's about doing away with unnecessary clutter. Imagine if social media websites began listing usernames as appose to tallying the numbers up? If a topic is popular, it could generate 100's of likes. Are users really going to read them? You're better off using that screen real-estate in a much more productive way.

All forum software has it built this way. This has Invision, XenForo, MyBB, phpBB 3.3, ElkArte. This way of displaying who liked the post does not make any clutter. If that were the wrong solution, these forums giants would not have implemented it.

Quote from: Wellwisher on December 28, 2021, 03:53:08 PMImagine if social media websites began listing usernames as appose to tallying the numbers up? If a topic is popular, it could generate 100's of likes.

The point is not that all users who like the post should be shown immediately. Only a few users should be displayed and the rest in the window.

(https://i.imgur.com/T79Wjqh.png)

Quote from: Kindred on December 28, 2021, 06:47:29 PMIf you want it in 2.1, then ask, perhaps pay, for a mod from one of the mid authors - unlikely to be the smf team

I've noticed that SMFPacks Likes Pro (https://www.smfpacks.com/likes/) has an advanced liking system, so this could be it.
Title: Re: Suggestion to change the display of likes in SMF 2.1
Post by: Arantor on December 29, 2021, 09:28:49 AM
I guess it never occurred to you that I might have had a reason to implement it the way I did.

IPS, XF, etc. store the list of likes on a post twice to achieve what they do, once in a format convenient for looking up and once in a format convenient for displaying. This means it consumes vastly more database space - which is less of a problem since users who pay for their forum script tend to pay for better hosting.

But in SMF's world this is a problem because there's a lot more people on worse hosting that have issues around performance and database size.

More importantly, if you, me and Kindred all like a post, that list then says "Arantor, jsx, Kindred". As in, the names, written out.

Now, on XF and IPS, your username is your display name and you can't change these very often (they're time limited and it's not an option you get just arbitrarily whenever you feel like it) - and this is because every time the username changes, you then have to go through and update *every single liked post* to rebuild that list.

And for bonus points, that's something you have to do with individual queries every single time, there is literally no safe way to write that as a single UPDATE query. Which means if you like 100 posts, that's now 100 database queries to change it. Which on a lot of hosts will be problematic.

Especially since on SMF, username and display name are separate and the latter is much easier to change on a whim... it's also good for security since my username *isn't* Arantor, you can't use that to log in as me here.

But sure, let's only focus on how you don't get to have it look how you want, and have zero consideration for how complicated it might be. I'm sure you'd have been thrilled if adding it meant you'd have to spend more on hosting, but I guess that's what I get for trying to not make things worse for people.

Then again if I'd had my way about everything, you'd have had reactions as a core feature in 2013 instead of likes when I added this to the core.
Title: Re: Suggestion to change the display of likes in SMF 2.1
Post by: jsx on December 29, 2021, 10:32:18 AM
@Arantor

Thanks for the detailed explanation. I'm glad that there is a liking system in SMF 2.1 at all, but I just noticed that other software have it a little differently and I wanted to add such a suggestion for 2.1

You surely know ElkArte and have you seen how they have it done there? After clicking on the icon with likes, is displayed Like by: here the names of the users are displayed.

Is that also so heavy for the database? ElkArte is based on SMF 2.1
Title: Re: Suggestion to change the display of likes in SMF 2.1
Post by: Arantor on December 29, 2021, 10:43:52 AM
Well, they're done in different ways; SMF's likes is designed to support things that aren't just message likes (it was intended that the underlying functionality should support mods too if they wanted to use it), ElkArte's is explicitly for messages.

But ElkArte's approach is to load the list of people who liked a post on demand, which means instead of making it expensive to update a display name, it makes viewing topics with likes more expensive on the server.

Thing is, they also did other things that were more about 'if your problem is a rubbish host, get a better host' - the requirements for ElkArte end up being higher in practice than SMF's.

They also collate the number of likes given and received on an account, something I purposefully never did mostly to avoid it being gamified by users, but also for a similar performance consideration (adding another query every time something is liked... isn't good)

Of course, the world has changed in the last 8 years since both projects first implemented likes. What was then more expensive could be changed now but it's still going to be awkward on lower-end hosting environments no matter what you do (because the lower end just piled more sites on to the same servers rather than giving everyone essentially a free upgrade).

And note that in both cases it's a database consideration not a PHP one so the improvements of PHP 7.x over 5.x don't help here.