In various roadmap sessions the past few years, and in a recent informal roadmap update from my CSM, you’ve mentioned working on a refresh of the Feed and UI. Terms like “Social Feed” or “Personalized Feed” and “Threaded Replies” have been mentioned.
If/when you get to that, I recommend using the opportunity to fix a common pain point / accidental user behavior.
Cause: Like button placement is inconsistent.
As the most common user action on a post, it is understandably placed to the furthest left.
However, when a user has the permissions to mark a reply as the Best Answer, the Like button shifts right in favor of the Best Answer button.
Issue: Accidental clicks of Best Answer
For years I’ve seen this with my super users. The super user role comes with the ability to mark answers on any post, not just a user’s own.
When my new superusers first get this permission, it takes them awhile to adjust. I’ve received feedback from them that it’s a big change. It’s to the point that I long ago introduced a bolded, highlighted call out of this change in their super user onboarding communications.
More recently, with the delivery of this idea (a big win btw), I am seeing it happen more frequently. In my custom tracking of answer marking, my logs show users mistakenly marking replies as the answer when they meant to like it. The unmark action comes in quick succession. It’s increased by the fact that the Best Answer button persists even after a question is marked as the answer, and when you click it, it switches the Best Answer.
TL;DR if you’re doing a UI refresh or redesign, always keep the Like (or emoji reaction) to the furthest left. It’s what users are used to on other social platforms. And it definitely should move when the Best Answer is present IMO.
