Paweł Kadysz I wish I could like a Talk. I'd like this one :P

Paweł Kadysz Ok, but now seriously... I know it would be a bold move but here's why it might do a lot of good:

1. 365 project shouldn't be about likes. It should be about creativity, documenting, journaling.

2. It's always nicer to get a comment instead of just like. To leave a comment you actually need to view the photo and the story behind it. I suspect getting rid of likes would make the number of comments go up significantly.

3. There are photos that are hard to like (sad stories especially).

4. Distinguish Tookapic from all other platforms powered by like-hungry users. "It's different here. It's not about likes."

5. Number of likes never reflected the actual quality of the photo. It always depended on how popular user is and it made the popular even more popular. Getting rid of likes would give the newcomers more recognition.

We'd still have the stars (maybe increase the daily limit to 10).

You could still like comments.

I wonder what the rest of you thinks.

Viola Kuniej finally! <3

jazzie It would be interesting to know if the amount of comments would increase if the likes would disappear. Yesterday I saw a pic with amazing colors, but it was framed so carelessly with a slanting horizon that I could not like it. If there was no option to like or not like but only to comment a pic I might have done so and the user might pay more attention to how he/she is composing the pics.
One question is if the option of giving stars away is not just the same as liking pics - many followers probably mean many stars.

agnieszka bladzik i really, really doubt people will write comments, without hearts will you really know if people saw your photo - would there be no of views? also how would it be then different then from likes? will people really click on each photo? or will end up with mindless scrolling and at the end leaving tookapic as there will be no feedback? Ask yourself how often do you write comments, do you really will take the time to look at recent photos and write something even for 10 of them each day? maybe at the beginning it will work, but taking a look on constructive criticism part I must say it will not.

B-B Wanders My first thought about getting rid of likes is negative. I don't really think that once the likes are gone, people will immediately start using comments to express their opinions.

Take a look at my profile statistics. I have uploaded 644 pictures which were commented 405 times. It's just 0.6 comment per photo. Assuming that comments activity bumbed up by 400% (which I don't believe in), I would get just 3 comments a day. I don't know the reason. Maybe I am not too generous in giving out the comments, maybe my stories are not too catchy or maybe people do not have time to drop a line here and in twenty different places.

Here you can say that this is not the place where numbers are most important things. You would say that this is the place where you can train your creativity, motivation and make your own world. Well, isn't creating the world without other people pointless? Tookapic became not only the platform for uploading pictures but also the place where community was born. It means that you are not uploading the pictures just for yourself. Otherwise, you can always keep them in your hard drive and do not share them with anybody. You want to see how people react about your story or skills and 'like' is the easiest and simplest way to do that. Going further, I recon 'likes' to be the primary tool to keep community more tight. Of course there are better ones like comments, Talks, weekly themes or Tookawalks, however, 'likes' are the most convienient.

All what I said doesn't mean that I would fight for the 'likes' till I die because many comments about them were right. What I would suggest is creating functionality which combines instant response with different reactions. Something similar to "eye" what Michał mentioned about, however without any additional options. As an example I would suggest Facebook reactions. Maybe idea is not original but I'm pretty sure that FB had similar problem and bunch of smart guys were thinking about that and I recon that it works well. To distinct the idea, maybe we could implement other reactions, more photography related, like 💡 which means that your photo has perfect light :D

craig I run a parallel project on Blipfoto, which I have done for 7 years. There are some similarities in that you can give likes (unlimited) and favourites (five – not anonymised though). This also leads to the same issues that occur here in as much as those with many followers get many stars and are always on the popular pages. In an earlier version of the blipfoto software you could turn on and off star ratings and/or comments for your entries (you can still turn off comments – normally used if you are too busy to give comments yourself). At one stage I was more focused on the stars and trying to get onto the popular page than actually getting a good photo and enjoying it. I decided to end this and turned off my ratings (stars) but left on my comments (pretty much ruling myself out of the popular page). I would have to say that I did not get many more comments than I had before, but It really did not matter though as I knew myself when I had taken a good photo or a bad one. Unfortunately, when the software was updated It was impossible to turn off ratings but by then it really did not bother me as I now tend to ignore them. The way I now look at it is, this is my project done for me and shared to others. It is nice to get feedback (stars or comments or even views) but this is first and foremost for me. It took me time to realise this and perhaps if turning off ratings had not been my choice I would not have taken it as well. I now enjoy posting my photos and looking at other peoples, appreciating and learning from the really good or unusual ones and trying to encourage others who may want advice on taking shots similar to some of mine.
Perhaps it may be an idea to allow people, who want to focus on being creative without the distraction of receiving likes, the ability to just toggle them off (or back on) for their entries. Others who like the feedback could leave them on.

anjin An idea: to implement a condition that one has to put 3 comments daily to upload his photo ... What do you think?

Michael Gatton 1. Keep likes but downgrade their value in terms of popularity
2. Increase stars, upgrade value .
3. Encourage people to view outside their circle of followers by only allowing likes/stars from the recent view.

Marcin K. Hmmm... Somebody wrote in his profile that the only photographer you should compare with is yourself in the past... or something like that. It sounds as a good advice what may help in making people feel less frustrated about their photos. What if we turn off the number of likes in photos of others and keep it as a statistic for the owner of the photo? Then you could compare your photos with the photos of the only photographer you should compare yourself with...

I love the idea of "reactions" proposed by @B-B . It is easier to click on something than write something. "good frame" "good light" "good perspective" "nice colors" "nice moment" "nice depth of field" "great post-processing" "creative" and heart as "nice dude/ Doing well/ keep it up!". Maybe you can come up with some more... You could choose maybe not just one of these but more (e.g., nice frame, nice light and heart).

Joe Fortin Just some thoughts:

1. I like the like feature. It provides me with an idea of how others perceive my photos. Yes, it is affected by the number of followers I have, and yes, I suspect that I get (more often than not) some mercy likes. But, at the same time it does provide a third-party input... Photo A got 12 likes vs. Photo B got 3 likes. Not scientific, but a casual idea of how things are going.

2. I don't like the like feature. It's a bit of a punch-to-the-gut when you've worked hard on a picture only to have it flop on the Like-O-Metre.

Aga Ka Not sure how to put in english shortly what I want to say, so bare with me please. I have now 3 stars to give away. Those go to photos I absolutely love for some reason. It doesn't go to the 3 favourite pictures of the day (not anymore). If I don't see photos I like enough to give a star I just don't give stars that day ( I also don't give stars/likes due to lack of time, but I now assume the perfect situation , when I have time every day to look at photos). I am not proffesional. When I give a star it is just me loving the photo. I also have likes to give to people. Unlimitted. That means (to me) that the criteria by which I give the stars differ to criterias by which I give likes. My likes are always honest as far as I can tell, but the photo I truly like does not have to be perfect to me, photo I give star to is basicly a photo I would gladly print out and hang in my house. Now, we can ofcourse say that we want to judge photos by really high standards and give few stars to the best pics we see that day. A lot of new people will not see recognition. Not because they cannot be good at photography but because they most likely aren't good yet. I am not sure if this made so far sence to you guys. About commenting on the photos... it is bit problematic since tookapic requiers you to tag photos with #feedbackplease to prtect people who don't want to hear any criticism... How do you guys see it? Removing #feedbackplease ? Otherwise how should I comment on a photo I want to recognize (but not with a star) if the person who took it did not ask for feedback? Typing something like ''super'' or ''great'' would become as meaningfull as giving a like, would just take more time. @Paweł please don't get me wrong if I misunderstood something, this is not to attack you or @Ian (in fact thatnk you for this topic, Ian) or anyone else. Those are simply questions I now have. I do understand the fact that likes don't really mean how good/bad photo is but at the same time it is simple form of recognizing it. I also think there might be a lot of people who simply don't feel good enough to give advise to others, I know I am one of them. I think this is one of the reason that most comments under pics are something like: ''great, love it, super'' . I know I am one of those people. I will try to comment on photos I really like giving it a compliment but I won't give any advise since , again, I don't feel good enough in photography to do that. I am not sure how to improve communication on tookapic, I am also not saying that removing likes won't work. I simply don't know that. Again, those were just questions I have. Also... there seems to be idea of maybe making likes anonymous so that those would be given more honestly. I understand that. It seems to me though, that it would be better for photos to be anonymous. I simply see photos in my feed, I don't know who took them and I honeslty give likes to the one I actually like? Not sure how to make possible for people to follow others though... maybe you can see who the autor of the photo is after you like it? Or after you give certain amount of likes you get notification that you seem to like photos of that particular person and you see the name ... or maybe it's really stupid idea. @Paweł I realize ofc that it's easy said.... Anyway, time for me to catch some sleep... early morning tomorrow.