I’m enjoying reading Gemlogs. There are no distractions, so the voice of the author comes through loud and clear.
When I enjoy a post, I want to say “thank you”; but usually only a little bit. Most posts do not deliver to me some earth shattering revelation; so the level of gratitude that I wish to express is about the same as if someone had held a door open for me.
/---\ That was pretty good
|o o| -- post. Lemme just drop
\---/ off this THX and I'll
| be on my way.
<THX>=---=
/ \
Usually the only way on offer to thank the author is to send an email, which has a much too high barrier to entry. That level of gratitude would be more appropriate if, say, the author had helped me carry some boxes to a new apartment.
So I do nothing.
/---\
|oo |
\---/
|
<THX>=---=
/ \
/---\
| oo|
\---/
|
<THX>=---=
/ \
/---\ Oh. There's nowhere
|o o| -- to put my THX. I guess
\---/ I'll throw it in the
| corner for now.
<THX>=---=
/ \
Which means that all those tiny gratitude particles accumulate over the day in a way that I find mildly uncomfortable. It’s as if people keep holding the door open for me then running off without looking so I can’t thank them.
<THX> /---\ That was a great day
<THX><THX> |o o| -- browsing Geminispace!
<THX><THX> \---/ My brain and heart are
<THX><THX><THX> | sated. But something
<THX><THX><THX><THX> =---= feels off, somehow.
<THX><THX><THX><THX> / \
<THX> /---\ Oh. Yeah. I feel bad
<THX><THX> |oo | -- about wasting all those
<THX><THX> \---/ perfectly good THX.
<THX><THX><THX> |
<THX><THX><THX><THX> =---= -- Lemme write a post
<THX><THX><THX><THX> / \ about it.
If I read one person’s Gemlog for a hundred posts then probably my gratitude will accumulate to the level needed to trigger an email; the equivalent of someone holding the door for me then running off a hundred times, so I chase after them to finally say thanks.
But in most cases it never will get to this point and so it’s just left hanging.
At the end of all my posts you’ll find a way to say “thanks” by clicking on a link.
Actually, there are three feedback links: “thanks”, “not for me” and “no opinion”. The reason for having three is mostly to distinguish crawlers from humans, assuming that any kind of bot will tend to hit all three evenly. It will also let me know if I ever post anything people strongly dislike—a useful signal.
If your server has any form of CGI it’s easy enough to implement this with redirects; but I guess a lot of gemlogs don’t have CGI.
A simpler way to achieve this within the Gemini protocol would be to establish some convention that clients can use to say “thanks”; for example, fetching the same `gmi` URL plus `?thanks`. This would then be easy to check for in logs and easy to add to clients.
The Web has already thoroughly explored this space and shown us, I hope, what must be avoided.
A “like” is a public action: you declare your allegiance to the liked thing, throwing your weight behind it; "+1”. It’s a currency for driving views and engagement; a token to earn.
A “thank you” is a private action: you say thanks to the creator, and that’s the end of it.
Gemini is about the small, the personal, the thoughtful.
But small and personal will in most cases not garner enough attention to overcome the email feedback barrier. You will never know that five people appreciated your poem about the finer points of 17th century crochet.
By rounding off feedback, by rounding to zero, the common practice today biases against the small.
Humans enjoy feedback, both the giving and the receiving.
It is, I hope, possible to separate the good from the bad; to have “thanks” but not “likes”.
/---\
<THX> <-- |o o| --> <THX>
\---/
<THX> <-- | --> <THX>
=---=
<THX> <-- / \ --> <THX>
Thanks everyone!
So far today, 2024-11-25, feedback has been received 245 times. Of these, 51 were likely from bots, and 194 might have been from real people. Thank you, maybe-real people!
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