EA - Forum feature update: reactions, improved search, updated post pages and more (July 2023) by Sharang Phadke

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Forum feature update: reactions, improved search, updated post pages and more (July 2023), published by Sharang Phadke on July 20, 2023 on The Effective Altruism Forum.We've introduced a number of new features in the last two months based on two high level goals of improving discussion dynamics and helping users find and engage with high quality content relevant to their interests. Highlights include:Reactions on commentsImproved search and the ability to sort search resultsA page to find posts you've saved, read, and voted onA feature that nudges post authors to consider running criticism past the people being criticizedThe "quick takes" section on the FrontpageAnd more!Reactions on commentsWe're launching a set of icon reactions with the goals of giving users a richer way to participate in discussions and an easier way to give positive feedback. We outlined our goals for this feature in detail here, and appreciate everyone who gave feedback on our design questions. We decided to launch a trimmed down set of reactions at the comment level and merge the experience with agree/disagree voting. For now this will only be applied to new posts, but we may update old posts to use the new reactions voting system in the future. Here's what the new experience looks like:A few notes:You can no longer strong agree or disagree.Agree/disagree reactions (and regular upvoting/downvoting) continue to be anonymous, while other reactions will be non-anonymous.We're starting out with this feature at the comment level, and plan to consider expanding it to the post level after we see how it goes. (We may also roll back reactions depending on how this test goes.)Better tools for finding that post you've been looking forSee your saved posts, read history, and vote historyWe've updated the saved & read page (formerly known as bookmarks) to show your saved posts, read history, and your vote history.Updated search, including sorting optionsWe've updated the search functionality to include the ability to sort by relevance, karma, and date. We also changed the entire backend infrastructure that powers search, so please let us know if you see surprising results!Nudging users to share criticismWe've developed the opinion that criticism is often more productive when shared with the people being criticized before it is published, and that some people who publish criticism would have run it past people if they'd thought of it. We were worried that heavy-handed interventions might deter useful critical writing, so have implemented small nudge on the draft page; a "tip" about this that appears on drafts of criticism and shares a link that might be useful. This is powered by a model that identifies posts as "criticism."Updates to post pagesWe've made a number of changes to post pages, and are still experimenting.Recommendations on postsAs mentioned here, we're experimenting with better ways to help readers find high quality posts relevant to their interests. Authors often tell us they feel disappointed when their posts get visibility for just a few days on the Frontpage and then drop off into oblivion, after tens or hundreds of hours of work. We've been experimenting with recommendations on post pages first, and may also consider personalized recommendations on the Frontpage. Our first experiments with recommendations at the bottom of post pages were promising, but we realized most users don't get to the bottom of pages, and are experimenting with showing them on the right side of post pages. We plan to monitor both user feedback and click rates to decide how to proceed.Updated post headerWe updated the headers of post pages to create more space for post titles and separate information and icons from post tags, and add a more familiar way to share posts.Reading completion bar ...