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Allow authors of posts to "acknowledge" a comment without replying

When I make a post and get several nice comments, I often want to thank the people who took the time to write a comment. However if there are too many or I'm having a low-energy day, replying with actual words feels quite overwhelming.


On a social media platform where "likes" are a thing, I could simply "like" the comments and move on. To be clear, I think it's good that cohost doesn't have "likes" and this request is not about adding that mechanic.


Instead of "liking" a comment, it would be cool if as the author of a post I could react in some way to the comments to acknowledge that I've seen them. This could be as simple as a binary checkbox "acknowledge this comment - yes/no" or it could be more open, like reacting to a comment with an emoji (similar to slack/discord).

To avoid it becoming an addictive mechanic, only the author can react to comments on their own post, as a one-time action. Notifications could be something like "[Author] has acknowledged your comment on [Post Title]".

TLDR It's a way of saying "Thank you, I have seen your comment, I appreciate that you took the time to write it" without having to actually physically write a reply.


8 people like this idea

little 'head peeking up' emoji except it's eggbug

1 person likes this

this would quickly become a societal obligation to do it to every comment, and then it's the same as if it didn't exist at all. I find it really refreshing that i can just leave a comment somewhere without ever knowing if they saw it or not, and it's *also* great that i can simply read comments on my own posts without needing to stress out about whether or not i should acknowledge the weird ones.


4 people like this

Yeah, pretty much what Azure said - my issue with comment likes wasn't just that they'd become a popularity contest (that would be solved just by hiding the numbers) but also that it would create an obligation to put a like on every comment, lest the commenter feel ignored or like they did something wrong. I'd much rather it become a social norm on Cohost to not assume the worst if the OP doesn't reply + break ourselves of the notion that comments *need* responses to begin with. 


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I feel like this can be just as easily achieved by just leaving an emoji as a reply. Nobody ever said comments have to be long.



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I would like this feature as long as it does not send a notification. Like emoji reactions on Github issues. I want to display gratitude toward commenters (maybe they said something useful that helped me, or they left kind words for me) or I just want to +1 their sentiment said to someone else. To go along with the site's ethos of avoiding popularity contents, this sort of thing should not be visible to anyone but the author of the post being commented on, and the author of the comment. This would enable me to convey simple gestures of affirmation without clogging people's notifications or the comments section.


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