Huh?
As I tend to understand these things, a 
means “I think others should read this”, without any statement about whether or not it is correct. 
, on the other hand means “I agree with it” and 
means “I disagree”.
But maybe this meaning isn’t obvious to others.
Looks like your e-mail client doesn’t render the Emoji characters.
1 Like
On this forum at least, I’ve always used it as I like/love this post. To me a thumbs up would be the same thing.
1 Like
It’s called “Mail” on my iPad. Apparently a product of Apple Computer Co.
They’re not emoji, they’re img elements. I get the same thing in Mail for Mac, even after clicking “Load Remote Content” and “Load Content Directly” (Monterey 12.6.1). It’s a result of using System Preferences > Network “Limit IP address Tracking”:
Limit IP address tracking by hiding your IP address from known trackers in Mail and Safari.
My hunch is they’re mistaken from tracking pixels because of their small height and width (20px).
2 Likes
To me the symbol connotes more of an emotional response, like “I’m so sorry that happened to you,” or “You have my sympathy.” So if we have to indicate “I agree,” or “Thanks for posting,” I think there’s room for both symbols.
My only other thought was it would be nice to have both a 
symbol and a 
symbol. Because sometimes a post is amusing, and other times I’m literally laughing out loud.
We can’t specify what people will put in posts, so this is just about reactions to the post. That said, no post should just be an emoji pointing at another one—it’s too content-free.
Here’s what I’m thinking now (and what I’ve enabled, in this order):
= The default “I like that you posted this.”
= “I agree with what you said in this post.”
= “This post is 100% correct and really helpful!” (An extension of the heart.)
= “Thank you!”
= “That’s funny”
= “Yay, Apple!” (It’s called “apple-six-colors.”)
= “I found this post confusing”
= “I disagree with what you said in this post.”
With the smiley, I’ve decided I don’t like the tears or the scrunched eyes, and not that much is really so funny as to warrant ROTFL. Grinning face with big eyes instead.
2 Likes
I’m unreasonably happy to have the six colours Apple logo as an option. 
2 Likes
In a post, you can type in any emoji your web browser will let you enter. With modern versions of macOS, the easiest way is to tap the Fn key to bring up the character viewer and then click on what you’d like.
(Interestingly, although the above was entered as emoji with the character viewer, and that’s what I see when editing the post, when it is quoted, they are replaced with Discourse tags:
:crazy_face::rabbit::snowman_with_snow::pizza::musical_keyboard::heart::orange_heart::yellow_heart::green_heart::blue_heart::purple_heart: )
But those tags will still render as the emoji characters and are not converted in the editor:
You can also use any other Unicode symbol you may like:
∰◐◑◒◓♪♫♬♺
Which are not converted to tags when quoted.
Actually, it’s quite informative. Emoji are internally converted to text-tags, which are replaced with images from a web server. But other Unicode characters are processed and transmitted as the text characters they are.
That’s a useful piece of information, and explains why you’re seeing what you’re seeing.
1 Like
Not sure I understand the value. If everyone who follows discussions via email gets these identical blue icons interspersed with the posting text, how will they follow or interpret the meaning?
I explained above why the images aren’t loading for some people in Apple’s Mail app. It’s not the fault of the message authors and not really Discourse’s fault, though it might be able to implement a workaround.
2 Likes
You can also use any custom emojis that have been added to the instance of Discourse you’re using. The only one I’m aware of on TidBITS Talk is the recently-added :apple_six_colors: (). Separately from the Reactions plugin, @ace can add any number of custom emojis he desires (and has been able to since the forum moved to Discourse) and we could use them in our posts.
It don’t sound like everyone who follows via email are getting missing image icons. As @cwilcox posited above 
, it is likely ‘only’ those people following via email, using Apple Mail, and that have Limit IP address Tracking turned on.
Not value for reading the message. But value for understanding why you are seeing some images (Unicode characters) but not others (Emoji). Which is the first step in coming up with a fix or workaround.
1 Like
Not to beat a dead horse, but if we’re trying to convey “that’s funny” with a big grin, wouldn’t be more appropriate? Perhaps it’s just me, but the you chose looks to me more like :-) than :-)) or :-D.
1 Like
Yeah, now that I see them together, I think I agree with you. Some teeth are necessary. Changing…
1 Like
@ace, just out of curiosity — does selecting any of these new responses count towards the board’s stats in an equal way or does only selecting add to that count while any other choice does nothing?
In the former case this would lead to a situation where even when somebody choses it would up the count under which strikes me as perhaps not exactly canonical. 
I was curious about that too, and it appears that it just counts the total number of emoji, so if a post gets 10 thumbs up and 1 thumbs down, it will look like “ 11”. From above…
So yeah, you have to hover over each one to see its individual count.