I cannot speak for the PS policy threads or the PS suggestion subforums so I won't. Instead I'll comment on areas I do frequent or have frequented in the past throughout my tenure of smogon.
In any competitive based subforum (OU, LC, CAP, OM, etc) likes have always felt, to me, as an easy way to identify the subcliques and "correct ideas" of the subforum. Those with the most likes on their post have frequently been seen as the "cool kids" of whatever area of the site it is. Often posts tend to devolve into various cliques likeganging each others posts in an attempt to back up their friend without any actual critical engagement of the post. People say it's easier to discern the popular posts in a thread and claim it is a good thing but in practice and longterm for both policy and forum engagement I'd say it is an inherently bad thing. Gauging a post by the likability of it based on the amount of luvdiscs or alomomolas it has is nothing more than forum bandwagonning and disincentivizes actual community engagement. The amount of likes on a post could be easily attributed to anything from actual legitimate good content to the amount of snark the post has in it, to even just how smart the individual sounds in the post (like my personal recent favorite quip: "Sparsely used conspiracy theories are a sign of an unhealthy theorization. If you want to look to nature for parallels, the mutation of social justice warriors that causes anarchy against the establishment increases resistance to common sense"). The amount of likes could also be attributed to how many times the post was linked in various "likewhoring" discord channels, a phenomena I find disgusting and a great reason social media is unhealthy for you (practically every single discord chat I've been in for teams, tours, or even just a group of friends has had some form of channel dedicated to mindless like react pleading by dropping the link to a thread or post you made. Instead, what matters in these areas of policy review and competitive subforum is the content of a post, which cannot be easily established without actual thoughtful critique and analyzing, a process that is not feasible when one's views are heavily influenced by the creator of the post or the amount of likes it has. I think a subforum where legitimate discussion takes place, debating back and forth, tend to devolve rather quickly when there are incentives aside from the quiddity of the conversation; i.e. imposing a quick dopamine rush in the form of 'likes' gives a tendency to post in a certain way as a 'gotcha' rather than posting in actual critique of the argument, and ultimately this affects policy and long term forum engagement as people either 1) wanting to post for fear of being gotcha'd (osh posting in the LC subforum and then getting 'gotchad' by zebraiken is one example of this, as well as im sure many other users fall victim to) or 2) people only wait to post and jump on whatever hot button issue some passionate poster posts about, rather than legitimately attempting to address issues in a subforum or tier or policy decision.
In any discussion based subforum, such as cong, reactions have quickly taken over the main debate. Cong has various other issues, such as inactive moderators or from certain people's point of view too biased moderators, but in my opinion reacts are the worst part that disincentivizes people from posting. Typing up a long thoughtful critique of a post only to be met with a 'haha' react from Mike "i think beastiality is probably ok morally" Dawg can be disheartening, especially to newer users and makes the environment seem fairly toxic. Moreover cong experiences the same issues that I addressed earlier in the previous paragraph; there are clear cliques within cong that artificially inflate support for posts / users simply based on brand name alone. In such a hotblooded subforum likes have been absolutely detrimental, stemming conversation because it's easier to just pop a click like there supporting a post that says 1 thing but not quite everything in response to something you find distasteful than to actually offer your own individualized, possibly more transparent, thoughts.
A user will make themselves known in their community based on their thoughts and posts alone, and a neon flashing sign that says "8 people liked this" to signify that indeed this user is well liked within the community and possibly their post is good is not needed, and if anything is a deterrent to reading the comment. There have been many times myself that I have fallen victim to that mindset, of believing in a post or argument in a thread simply because there are certain players I respect that happen to like the post, and if they like it then surely the post is a good one. Conversation is far more fruitful when people are forced to actually look at the content of the post and juxtapose it with their own beliefs, or write up a response to a post rather than just dropping a quick "dislike." I was originally in the camp for adding a dislike button to offset the toxicity of likes but now I think that it only exacerbates the issue of a disengaging community.
The purpose of likes in your eyes, specifically in relation to content regarding PS, seems to be to be able to sort by popularity for newer users. While I can understand this point of view forcing reacts upon the forum to make it more like a social media site is the wrong way to go about it, and instead enabling it in specific parts of the forum with the default being disabled would be a far better solution than disabling it in specific parts of the forum and enabling be default. That may seem like just a semantical argument but the importance of the default state of the forum cannot be stressed, as people are naturally inclined towards the status quo and simultaneously will support whatever dopamine rush they have become accustomed to (no matter how toxic to their mental health it may be). Moreover I think that that issue could simply be solved by bringing back the old luvdiscs; the ones that were common on the RMT subforum back in 2012 that you could luvdisc a thread, not a post, and easily sort by popularity that way. I don't see your point on PS policy creation because that conversation could easily be solved by whatever private PS chat / discord chat / slack chat you guys are in anyway, as the main dudes involved in PS policy creation probably talk amongst themselves to begin with, and I don't see the necessary element in likes on the forums there.
My personal preference
Stellar is, in order from most preferred to least, is to 1) disable likes entirely and cut smogon cold turkey from like dopamine infusions; 2) bring back old luvdiscs (
old luvdiscs) and disable likes on the subforums as a default; 3) create a specific style that enables or disables likes (depending on pov) and all reacts and the ability to see reacts on posts for users; 4) continue to feed this wolf and decelerate forum culture into a like dependent environment. I think
Martin is entirely right in that likes have been nothing but a downward spiral for the forums since creation, as any quick incentive would do to a passionate fanbase forum.
