Many people make posts in Suggestions that just say “Support.” and then other people have to tell them that they aren't constructive. So I'm suggesting a way to tell that you support a suggestion without posting:

• At the bottom of the OP in every topic in Suggestions, there would be a “Support” and a “No Support” button. They could look like this (it's just an idea):
  
  If liking posts gets implemented, the like button would be replaced with these buttons in Suggestions.
  
  
• If you click the “Support” button, you are added to a public list of supporters and a support count (displayed next to the Support button) is increased by one. The list of supporters is shown when you click the count. I think supporting should also bump the topic. You could click again to unsupport, but unsupporting and supporting again would not bump the topic. If you wanted to explain why you support, you could still make a post.
  
  
• If you click the “No Support” button, a message would appear like “Thanks for your feedback. Please explain your opinion by leaving a reply.” and the No Support would not be incremented until you reply to the topic. This is to prevent people from clicking “No Support” with no reason. If your reply is later deleted, you are automatically removed from the list of non-supporters.
  
  
• Alternatively, you would be able to non-support without a reason. But this might cause no support spam.
  
  
• Note: The No Support button doesn't even need to be there.
  

I suggested this because I think having buttons for Support / No Support would decrease the number of unconstructive posts a lot.

I noticed the Snap! forum has something like this, but no downvoting, only upvoting:



To better understand this suggestion, read this post by @Za-Chary*:

Za-Chary wrote:

I think this is an interesting suggestion. On the one hand, yes, there is the notion of the forums not being a ballot box, and we'd like to discourage the use of “support” and “no support” and all that. But on the other hand, I see where you're coming from. You're looking for a way to stop people from writing posts that simply contain “Support, this is a good idea!”

Of course, we should all be aware that this suggestion wouldn't actually do much with the chances of a suggestion being implemented. As we've seen many times before, the number of people who say “support” or “no support” has no influence on whether the suggestion gets implemented. Hopefully you are intending this suggestion to be a sort of “placebo” for people. Whether or not they understand that supporting or no supporting actually does nothing in that case, I suppose it doesn't matter as long as they don't write posts which contain only “support.”

But I think we (including the people who've already posted here) need to ask ourselves what it is we don't like. Do we dislike the support system as a whole? Or do we dislike the fact that people make posts containing only “support,” and the topics that use a list of supporters? If it's the latter, then this suggestion is a good idea. Because, quite honestly, if the support system was in the form of like/dislike buttons, there would be much less people writing unconstructive posts.

Yes, I do agree with some others that the support system should just be abandoned overall in the hopes that everyone writes constructive posts. But I also think that this suggestion is a good alternative route to the issue. Certainly it would help the constructiveness of posts; those who support can post to explain further why they support.

Other people's feedback

Supporters wrote:

Bacteria999 wrote:

It would reduce spam by at least 50%

PizzaAdict4Life wrote:

it makes it much easier to do that, and it looks good!

Sheep_maker wrote:

The support/no support spam can be relegated to the voting buttons, allowing for the actual discussion to focus on the upsides and downsides. The Scratch Team has no obligation to look at the numbers in the voting box, though they can to see if an idea is unpopular

I don't think the support/no support system would otherwise go away

[…]

I don't think we should force people to give a reason to no support for the button. One of the problems with requiring reasons for supporting and no supporting these days is that the same reasons are often repeated since some people feel obligated to share their opinions. I think the button should be reserved for pure opinion without reason, while the actual reasons can go separately in the discussion

In a later post:
Overall, I highly doubt we'll drop the support convention, as previous attempts in the past have failed. This suggestion helps redirect the convention into an insignificant set of buttons rather than outright removing it, so people who still refuse to drop the support/no support convention can use the buttons instead

In a third post:
How would the buttons make the responses less constructive?

--Explosion-- wrote:

I still think everyone writing constructive posts would still be better, but realistically there's no way that's going to happen, therefore I have changed to support!

robloxdude10 wrote:

Support! So you're thinking something like this? I totally agree!

Nambaseking01 wrote:

Still rather reluctant to agree with this suggestion, but like @Za-Chary said, I see where you're coming from.

This just feels right in some roundabout way - because if people are going to make unconstructive posts they can always just click on a button. Maybe posting would be to expand on the suggestion or share thoughts in detail.

Darkstar177 wrote:

I Support, as this could cut down on spam and help out the forum.

MontyDoggo wrote:

Support to the max. This makes responding topics easier, and it could be used for purposes for stuff like polls, in which you can see what people think.

ResExsention wrote:

The new buttons are a bit out of the way though, aren't they?

Perhaps there should be a popup which would prompt the person to vote on the suggestion if they haven't done so already, or just pass.

Support.

Semi-supporters wrote:

coder2045 wrote:

40% support. It would cut back on unconstructive posts but it would encourage plain unconstructive supports.

I still have to add non-supporters' opinions here

Support! It would reduce spam by at least 50%

Bacteria999 wrote:

Support! It would reduce spam by at least 50%

Thank you for your support. Yes, this would reduce the number of unnecessary posts.

Actually, it would much better benefit the suggestions forum if nobody said support or no support at all! The suggestion forums is a discussion, and not a ballot box. It isn't about what suggestion is most popular, it's about going in depth into each suggestion and refining it to improve it as a community. Promoting the idea that supporting/no supporting a suggestion is more valuable by making it easier to do so would only increase the impression that it makes a difference to the suggestion, which it doesn't!

It'd be much better to as a community, give up this support convention and instead focus on analysing and improving every suggestion with constructive feedback instead instead of solely voting against them

Sigton

Support.

Sigton wrote:

Actually, it would much better benefit the suggestions forum if nobody said support or no support at all! The suggestion forums is a discussion, and not a ballot box. It isn't about what suggestion is most popular, it's about going in depth into each suggestion and refining it to improve it as a community. Promoting the idea that supporting/no supporting a suggestion is more valuable by making it easier to do so would only increase the impression that it makes a difference to the suggestion, which it doesn't!

It'd be much better to as a community, give up this support convention and instead focus on analysing and improving every suggestion with constructive feedback instead instead of solely voting against them

Sigton

No support.

Sigton wrote:

Actually, it would much better benefit the suggestions forum if nobody said support or no support at all! The suggestion forums is a discussion, and not a ballot box. It isn't about what suggestion is most popular, it's about going in depth into each suggestion and refining it to improve it as a community. Promoting the idea that supporting/no supporting a suggestion is more valuable by making it easier to do so would only increase the impression that it makes a difference to the suggestion, which it doesn't!

It'd be much better to as a community, give up this support convention and instead focus on analysing and improving every suggestion with constructive feedback instead instead of solely voting against them

Sigton

I understand you and I agree that constructive feedback is more useful than support/no support. But because people often want to show that they like a suggestion and they don't have anything constructive to say that wasn't said before, I think there should still be a way to show your support without posting.

I don't think this is a good idea.

As discussed a few hours earlier, someone pointed out that saying “no support” could come off as rude / unprofessional, so we figured “support” is also kinda spammy. Making those into buttons wouldn't really stop much, and it won't stop people from being unconstructive. We're supposed to talk about how to improve a suggestion, not whether we agree or not.

And what if we both support and don't at the same time? Lots of ideas are nuanced. I've stopped saying “support” / “no support” a while ago because my ideas for improvement are more nuanced than agree or disagree.

But because people often want to show that they like a suggestion and they don't have anything constructive to say that wasn't said before, I think there should still be a way to show your support without posting.

If you agree but you don't have anything to add, then don't post. Sigton's made a point: this isn't a ballot box, it's a discussion forums.

NilsTheBest wrote:

I don't think this is a good idea.

As discussed a few hours earlier, someone pointed out that saying “no support” could come off as rude / unprofessional, so we figured “support” is also kinda spammy. Making those into buttons wouldn't really stop much, and it won't stop people from being unconstructive. We're supposed to talk about how to improve a suggestion, not whether we agree or not.

And what if we both support and don't at the same time? Lots of ideas are nuanced. I've stopped saying “support” / “no support” a while ago because my ideas for improvement are more nuanced than agree or disagree.

But because people often want to show that they like a suggestion and they don't have anything constructive to say that wasn't said before, I think there should still be a way to show your support without posting.

If you agree but you don't have anything to add, then don't post. Sigton's made a point: this isn't a ballot box, it's a discussion forums.

The purpose of this suggestion is to stop posts saying just “Support” / “No Support”.

Honestly, this would just make the problem worse.

Saying simply “Support” or “No support” adds nothing to the discussion and is overall useless. Encouraging supporting a suggestion without reason could translate badly in the future.

To add a button just so people can do something that is useless is pretty ridiculous. Same with supporters/semi-supporters/non-supporters lists. They serve no purpose, other then to brag; “Look how many people agree with me!”

I really hope that the support/no support trend comes to a end. It never was the best in the first place, and it's become more and more of a problem.

I think this is an interesting suggestion. On the one hand, yes, there is the notion of the forums not being a ballot box, and we'd like to discourage the use of “support” and “no support” and all that. But on the other hand, I see where you're coming from. You're looking for a way to stop people from writing posts that simply contain “Support, this is a good idea!”

Of course, we should all be aware that this suggestion wouldn't actually do much with the chances of a suggestion being implemented. As we've seen many times before, the number of people who say “support” or “no support” has no influence on whether the suggestion gets implemented. Hopefully you are intending this suggestion to be a sort of “placebo” for people. Whether or not they understand that supporting or no supporting actually does nothing in that case, I suppose it doesn't matter as long as they don't write posts which contain only “support.”

But I think we (including the people who've already posted here) need to ask ourselves what it is we don't like. Do we dislike the support system as a whole? Or do we dislike the fact that people make posts containing only “support,” and the topics that use a list of supporters? If it's the latter, then this suggestion is a good idea. Because, quite honestly, if the support system was in the form of like/dislike buttons, there would be much less people writing unconstructive posts.

Yes, I do agree with some others that the support system should just be abandoned overall in the hopes that everyone writes constructive posts. But I also think that this suggestion is a good alternative route to the issue. Certainly it would help the constructiveness of posts; those who support can post to explain further why they support.

Maximouse wrote:

NilsTheBest wrote:

-snip-

The purpose of this suggestion is to stop posts saying just “Support” / “No Support”.

Stopping posts isn't enough - it still discourages discussion.

Maximouse wrote:

If this is a duplicate I'm sorry, but I wasn't able to find any duplicates.

Many people make posts in Suggestions that just say “Support.” and then other people have to tell them that they aren't constructive. So I'm suggesting a way to tell that you support a suggestion without posting:

• At the bottom of the OP in every topic in Suggestions, there would be a “Support” and a “No Support” button. They could look like this (it's just an idea):
  
  If liking posts gets implemented, the like button would be replaced with these buttons in Suggestions.
  
  
• If you click the “Support” button, you are added to a public list of supporters and a support count (displayed next to the Support button) is increased by one. The list of supporters is shown when you click the count. I think supporting should also bump the topic. You could click again to unsupport, but unsupporting and supporting again would not bump the topic.
  
  
• If you click the “No Support” button, a message would appear like “Thanks for your feedback. Please explain your opinion by leaving a reply.” and the No Support would not be incremented until you reply to the topic. This is to prevent people from clicking “No Support” with no reason. If your reply is later deleted, you are automatically removed from the list of non-supporters. Non-supporting would not bump the topic.
  

You only have to explain why you don't support? That's where this suggestion begins to fall apart. You should be constructive and give feedback about why you like/dislike a suggestion so that the Scratch Team can understand your perspective on a suggestion and possibly persuade them to your perspective. Pressing a support button without saying why is just like saying “support” and nothing else.

Support! it makes it much easier to do that, and it looks good! But what about semi support?

PizzaAddict4Life wrote:

Support! it makes it much easier to do that, and it looks good! But what about semi support?

Then write a post that explains what could be improved. The purpose of this suggestion is to stop posts saying just “Support, this is a good idea!” or “No support, this is useless.”

Maximouse wrote:

PizzaAddict4Life wrote:

Support! it makes it much easier to do that, and it looks good! But what about semi support?

Then write a post that explains what could be improved. The purpose of this suggestion is to stop posts saying just “Support, this is a good idea!” or “No support, this is useless.”

I gave my opinion, it makes it look better and it is easier. But I also have the concern of semi support

Sigton wrote:

Actually, it would much better benefit the suggestions forum if nobody said support or no support at all! The suggestion forums is a discussion, and not a ballot box. It isn't about what suggestion is most popular, it's about going in depth into each suggestion and refining it to improve it as a community. Promoting the idea that supporting/no supporting a suggestion is more valuable by making it easier to do so would only increase the impression that it makes a difference to the suggestion, which it doesn't!

It'd be much better to as a community, give up this support convention and instead focus on analysing and improving every suggestion with constructive feedback instead instead of solely voting against them

Sigton

I agree with you, but I think that's why we should add dedicated buttons for this. The support/no support spam can be relegated to the voting buttons, allowing for the actual discussion to focus on the upsides and downsides. The Scratch Team has no obligation to look at the numbers in the voting box, though they can to see if an idea is unpopular

I don't think the support/no support system would otherwise go away

Maximouse wrote:

• If you click the “No Support” button, a message would appear like “Thanks for your feedback. Please explain your opinion by leaving a reply.” and the No Support would not be incremented until you reply to the topic. This is to prevent people from clicking “No Support” with no reason. If your reply is later deleted, you are automatically removed from the list of non-supporters. Non-supporting would not bump the topic.
  

I don't think we should force people to give a reason to no support for the button. One of the problems with requiring reasons for supporting and no supporting these days is that the same reasons are often repeated since some people feel obligated to share their opinions. I think the button should be reserved for pure opinion without reason, while the actual reasons can go separately in the discussion

You only have to explain why you don't support? That's where this suggestion begins to fall apart. You should be constructive and give feedback about why you like/dislike a suggestion so that the Scratch Team can understand your perspective on a suggestion and possibly persuade them to your perspective. Pressing a support button without saying why is just like saying “support” and nothing else.

Suggestions are not ballot boxes, as @Sigton said. I feel as though this suggestion could leave unconstructive replies. At that point, you wouldn't worry about the suggestion, but you'd be worried about:

Support: (number)
No Support: (number)

If the point of this suggestion is to leave constructive replies, then you should have to explain the reasoning behind your support/no support. You said that you must only leave a response if you don't support. But what about support? Should you not explain what could be useful in a suggestion?

Super_Scratch_Bros20 wrote:

If the point of this suggestion is to leave constructive replies, then you should have to explain the reasoning behind your support/no support. You said that you must only leave a response if you don't support. But what about support? Should you not explain what could be useful in a suggestion?

I think the purpose of this suggestion isn't to encourage more constructive replies but rather to have somewhere to put unconstructive posts that are merely “support” or “no support.” This would clean up the Suggestions forum and facilitate constructive discussion.

NilsTheBest wrote:

As discussed a few hours earlier, someone pointed out that saying “no support” could come off as rude / unprofessional, so we figured “support” is also kinda spammy. Making those into buttons wouldn't really stop much, and it won't stop people from being unconstructive. We're supposed to talk about how to improve a suggestion, not whether we agree or not.

Making buttons for supporting/no supporting doesn't replace the forums' posting feature, so people can still improve a suggestion as a post in the discussion, while reserving their opinion on whether they agree to the buttons. Also, being unconstructive in the form of pressing a button isn't really a problem.

PrincessFlowerTV wrote:

Saying simply “Support” or “No support” adds nothing to the discussion and is overall useless. Encouraging supporting a suggestion without reason could translate badly in the future.

Perhaps it may encourage people to support without a reason, but I think it's fine as long as they don't post, and they can express their support in that way by pressing the button instead

PrincessFlowerTV wrote:

To add a button just so people can do something that is useless is pretty ridiculous. Same with supporters/semi-supporters/non-supporters lists. They serve no purpose, other then to brag; “Look how many people agree with me!”

I agree that the buttons are useless, but I think that in this case it helps to reduce spam. The case for supporter lists are different in this sense since they encourage users to make unconstructive posts

Overall, I highly doubt we'll drop the support convention, as previous attempts in the past have failed. This suggestion helps redirect the convention into an insignificant set of buttons rather than outright removing it, so people who still refuse to drop the support/no support convention can use the buttons instead

Sheep_maker wrote:

Overall, I highly doubt we'll drop the support convention, as previous attempts in the past have failed. This suggestion helps redirect the convention into an insignificant set of buttons rather than outright removing it, so people who still refuse to drop the support/no support convention can use the buttons instead

However, if you had to explain why you support, then couldn't that reduce a lot of posts that just say “support”? And how could adding buttons make it any better? This could potentially make even less constructive responses.

People new to the suggestions forums could press “No support”, and to explain why, they could just say,

The suggestion is dumb

without explaining anything. Sure, that's possible through the posts, but you can ask them to expand on their point. It would be harder to get a response from them if it was a list, as they would just make a point and leave.

Also, couldn't viewing the support/no support list be very laggy if it's long?

Also couldn't you support multiple times on your alternate accounts so that you could pressure people who don't support to support?

Overall, I don't think this has much of a use, because you can just leave your opinion in a post.

Question: how would the OP receive the criticism from No Supporters?
If only the OP saw the criticism, then it wouldn't benefit the discussion at all.
If it was made public, then what's the point as you could've just made a post.