Enhancing User Engagement with Upvote Feature

[freedompraise]

Context

Based on personal observations, there's a noticeable opportunity to enhance the platform's user experience by introducing an Upvote Feature. This feature aims to provide users with a means to acknowledge and promote high-quality blog content, fostering a more interactive and rewarding environment.

Ideal Solution

Implement a user-friendly Upvote Feature that allows individuals to express appreciation for outstanding blog posts. This feature should be seamlessly integrated into the platform, enabling users to easily upvote content that they find valuable.

Workarounds

• Manually track and share appreciated content through external channels.
• Encourage users to leave positive comments as an alternative means of recognition.

Additional Context and Related Issues

• Exploring the impact of user-specific upvoting on content visibility.
• Considering the potential positive influence of personal recognition within the community.
• Seeking input from other users to gauge interest and support for the proposed Upvote Feature.

[jsolly]

When this gets picked up, we should add the # of upvotes to the post card as well as the post-details page. Somewhere next to where the # of comments will go.
#393

[freedompraise]

Can you take up this issue? @jsolly
For some reason, the static files on my pc are not loading

[jsolly]

Honestly, I took this feature out in #77 for a few reasons:

1 - If we ever make caching more aggressive, it will probably break
2 - Had to keep track of IP addresses so people couldn't keep clicking the upvote button (or clear their cache and hit upvote again)...if people use a VPN, they could also bypass these measures.

I am fine to keep this on the back burner for now.

[jsolly]

Just to re-iterate...because the internet is anonymous, an upvote feature can always be gamed unless you have authenticated users.

And most people don't want to have to sign up just to upvote a blog post.

Ran into the similar issue with commenting functionality. Once you start letting users affect your website (upvotes, comments) you then need to start spending time moderating and making sure no one is messing with you (like using a VPN to upvote 10,000 times)