Change Kudos to Likes?

[Angrboda]

I've actually been spoiled by the kudos button. Over at JNE forums, I've had to ask for a similar device to be installed because I missed having the ability to thumb-up a post as a way of saying "nice one" or similar. What we got was something of a stopgap compromise, due to software limitations as I understand it. Anyway, maybe the system here can be improved or overhauled, maybe it even needs it and maybe in the future that will happen. For the here and now, though, I suggest that anyone who for whatever reason dislikes the facility doesn't use it.

The thing is, a forum with a like button, or no like button, or a forum with a dislike button, they all affect the social dynamic different ways. My other forum has neither reputation or like button, so you express things in words and images instead of kudos. It seems to result in a more intensely personal experience, and also serves as additional energy adding to the diversification of content in a thread. Maybe too personal. It's part of the ethos in addition to being a side effect of structure that people are nicer and gentler to each other there. As a consequence, people who are aggressive, combative or competitive have a more difficult fit. This is just my opinion, but I think that results in a less capable and smaller stable of debaters, with consequences for serious threads. So my time on that forum is fun, frivolous, artsy and personal. My time here is more intellectually intense and verbally challenging. Over time my preference shifts, and I'm currently expending more time and energy here.

It's not that a dislike button, or no kudos, would ruin a forum, but I think it would change it. It wouldn't be so much better or worse as simply different. That fact alone may argue against big changes. People have become stable communities here because of the resulting dynamic. A change like adding a dislike button would change that, and some regulars wouldn't like the change or adapt to it, and quite a few would leave. But then, some less active regulars might become more so, and a new crowd come and stay. It's neither saving or destroying what we have; but it would change it.