(cc’d to baby name blog)
One of you mentioned the other day that you wished you could “like” someone’s comment, and I thought yes, that would be so fun, too bad it isn’t an option. Then someone else said it, and I thought, well, maybe I should just make sure that wasn’t a possibility, and I poked around behind the scenes in the commenting options area but there was no option for “likes”—too bad. Then someone said it VERY VEHEMENTLY and I thought “OKAY FINE I WILL CHECK FOR SURE” and I searched online and…found something. And I THINK, I THINK I have enabled “likes” on comments.
However. Beta testing by a helpful friend indicates you may need to be logged into WordPress in order to like a comment. Do any of you happen to know any way around that, and/or are you good at researching such things? (It took my maximum tech research effort to get as far as I have.) I don’t want it to be a feature available for WordPress Members Only, and may remove the “like” option if that’s the only way it can be.
(A note: I hope it is intuitively clear that I can never, ever, ever hit “like” on ANYONE’S comment, or else I will need to hit “like” on EVERY SINGLE comment, and one of those strategies is less work and less likely to go amiss than the other, so that is the one I will be doing. It will be UNDERSTOOD that Swistle automatically MENTALLY hits “like” on every comment.)
Follow-up: It looks like the comment-likes system is a WordPress Members Only club, so I am turning it back off.
I just went back to the previous post to read comments and can now see a blue like star. As far as I know I do not have a Word Press account or am signed in.
Wait, update. I pushed the like button and it prompted me to log in. I did NOT log-in, when it went back to post, the like star was yellow instead of blue. Did I like it? I don’t know.
Same.
Reporting for data point reasons.
Same.
I can see the “like” button on the post above mine (it says “like” with a blue star next to it) but when I clicked on it I got a pop-up prompting me to sign in.
I meant to say on the comment above mine! (While we’re on the subject of New Things To Do With Comments, I wish there was an edit feature!)
It looked to me like there was also an option to log in using google or fb, but I happen to have a WP account so didn’t test those options.
I think it is a WordPress feature and/or a Facebook widget. I have been asked for the same for my Blogger blog. It’s far beyond my technical abilities. But I seem to recall liking comments in your comments before. Helpful not! I know.
I just tried it on the H baby name post and it seems to work. It did ask me to log in. Thankfully my ancient wordpress login still seems to be functional.
I clicked Like and it prompted me to Log In to WordPress and I don’t remember my password on there. I think maybe I made an account way back when.
I am writing this comment purely to have one un-liked, that i can use to test out liking without signing in on, to see the results.
oh! well that didn’t work as expected. I assumed the blue star meant a comment had already been liked, but mine showed up blue to start (as did all comments above mine – which I assumed were each “liked” already by at least one person) which means that I personally cannot tell if/when a comment has been liked, or how frequently. I think I may have an old wordpress account that I can log into… will test now as a logged in person.
OK, newest update, I appear to have logged into some decrepit wordpress account, and I can now click a Like star, which briefly turns gold and says “you have liked this comment”… but then turns blue again shortly thereafter, and I still/also cannot see any other likes on other comments.
Final (maybe/I hope) update ;D I CAN IN FACT NOW SEE LIKES, I don’t know why I couldn’t before, maybe only after refreshing the page? However I logged out of wordpress, and I’m back to not being able to like comments. So my personal experience would seem to confirm that only wordpress account-havers may Like comments.
(Thank you goodbye I will stop spamming your comments now)
I tried to like a comment and got directed to sign into WordPress, so it definitely does seem to be a feature only available for WordPress members.
Also, just my unsolicited two cents: For ME, I’m not really a fan of liking comments with stars or thumbs up or what have you, so I’d rather it not be a feature at all. Stars, etc. are a metric that are just too easy to compare- “that comment got 10 likes, but mine only got 3”- and I can 100% see feeling bad about something like that. Also, for ME, I can 100% see projecting my feeling bad about it onto others empathetically and wanting to make sure that everyone’s comment gets at least one like so no one gets left out and it just seems like a can of worms that’s better left sealed. Again, 100% for me. I’m sure that the vast majority of your readers are grown-ups and not mentally stuck back in the high school popularity contest era but that’s where my mind goes.
Yes, I am not sure how I would do with having an un-liked comment. (I am mostly okay-ish with there being differential numbers of likes, but please, can *someone* have heard what I said?)(although it sounds like maybe Swistle reads all the comments, which would be plenty for me, so there is that.)