Emoji appeared on Github: reactions to pull requests, bugs and comments

Github is more than just a code hosting service and a version control system. This is a real social network for programmers, and it is not surprising that sometimes you want to put an icon to mark someone's comment. Now it has become possible. Starting today, emoji-reactions to pull requests, bugs and comments have appeared on Github.



Github hopes this will make communication more efficient.

Emoji could be inserted before, but only in separate messages. This led to a lot of noise, especially in popular projects. Now the reaction is added directly to the text of the original message, so it turns out much more concise. This is how the system of reactions in Slack and other popular chat services is implemented.
')
The developers of Github have identified a list of six emoji, they "cover the entire range of reactions that users usually express in the comments": this , , , , , . The use of emoji will be studied. Perhaps the list will change or expand in the future.

Some users believe that adding the “thumbs down” reaction is a mistake, because negative voting is not constructive. It is often used as a punishment for a specific user, and not as constructive criticism. For example, on StackOverflow, a negative voting right is a special privilege for users with high reputations.

A negative vote makes this behavior acceptable when the user can express a negative position without having to argue it. Is this really necessary for constructive communication?

On the other hand, negative voting is necessary in order to find out the opinion of the audience, if you need to ask a question like "Do I need to implement such a function?".

Another nuance - is it worth showing the result of the previous vote to a new visitor? It is believed that the previous result may affect it. It may be better to hide the result of the vote before the person decides on his own opinion.