Thumbs-up, Thumbs-down meaning

[CharleyBC]

I've been on the TMC fora since June, and find this a valuable place to spend time. But I have noticed one odd thing, and since there's a forum for suggestions, I thought I'd mention it here.

I've seen a few instances where someone responds to a post with a thumbs-down. This ends up offending or confusing the author of the post. Thumbs-down on these fora means "disagree," according to the tooltip text. And people say, "how can you disagree with that? It's fact." Or similar things.

I think what's happening is folks using thumbs-down think it means "dislike" instead of "disagree". This is a reasonable misunderstanding. Thumbs-up means "like," so they expect thumbs-down means "dislike."

Consider a post such as "I dented my frunk today." Someone wishes to express sympathy for the poster's problem and clicks thumbs-down, intending to mean, "I dislike that happened to you." But the poster says, "How can you disagree that I dented my frunk?"

What if we change thumbs-down to mean "dislike" and add a new icon for "disagree," perhaps a do-not-enter icon or a frowny face or something.

Just a thought...

 

[DirtyT3sla]

I gave you an ironic Disagree. I hope it's ok

 

[ewoodrick]

Aside from the fact that this is commercial software and you don't have infinite options, I think that agree is more descriptive than like.

But honestly I suspect that when reading this thread, most people will hover over the button and see what it actually says. TheyvTh never read it, just clicked it

 

[frisko1_]

Thumbs up dude!