And, in email, pretty uninformative:
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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Yeah, now that I see them together, I think I agree with you. Some teeth are necessary. Changing…
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@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.
You can also click or tap the number (or the emojis I think) and get a pop up showing who responded, and how, graphically:
Thank you both — I was actually aware of that part. But I was curious about the count on user profiles. So basically, User Menu > Person Icon > Summary > Stats > given and received.
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Interestingly, the page only shows three different reactions (I assume the most popular three). To see the rest, you need to click on it. For instance on your message above:
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That’s a good question! I’ve currently got 469 :
Give this post a and I’ll let you know whether I have 470 ‘’ after.
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It’s still showing 469, after @ace and I both voted thumbs-down. So it looks like there is some such logic running.
Looking at my own history at the number of hearts given, it appears that only the hearts apply to the total. The other reactions don’t seem to contribute at all.
…
And I see that @Simon just gave you a thumbs-up, and it is still showing 469.
And if I now change my reaction to a heart, it’s still showing 469.
I now wonder if this new plugin contributes at all to the statistics.
Ouch, my did not raise it either.
I personally prefer to just because the latter to me feels too goofy. But it looks like that also means folks’ stats aren’t properly reflecting when I value their posts. Hmm…
Yes, all very odd, I would have expected to at least get a credit for the ! Maybe the stats only update once a day or something? I’ll check back tomorrow.
I’m now at 472 ‘ received’ in my stats, and since the post last night where I had 469:
- I received 2 on that post
- I received 1 on that post
- I received 1 on that post (thanks a lot @ace!
) - I received another on a different post
- I received a on a different post
So I think we can say that only the counts towards the Likes stats. (I still don’t understand why @Shamino’s didn’t initially register as a Like for me, but maybe it’s because it was changed from an initial and takes some time for the system to ‘notice’.) Another data point is that if you look in your account’s activity sidebar, there is now an extra section for ☺︎Reactions (given), separate from Likes (given). I have also found one post on the Discourse discussion noting that Reactions don’t contribute to official likes (raised in relation to where these are needed to progress through trust levels):
In summary, whilst several people here see and as interchangeable in meaning, from Discourse’s standpoint they are very different! (Maybe this argues for not having as it creates ambiguity?)
@ace, have you been changing the available emoji reactions? I noticed the other day that 
wasn’t appearing, and then today I went to use my beloved and it wasn’t there either! 
Indeed has has.
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