responses-naming

The goal of this discussion was to get rough consensus around what to call the set of things that is replies/comments, reposts/reshares, likes/favorites.

The conclusion (2015) was: responses was preferred over interactions.

Interactions
 interactions  is a more recent term being used for the set of things that people do to blog posts.

If you have opinions or experience with using the term interactions, please add them here:


 * +1 undefined: I've used the term "interactions" successfully in talks (e.g. 2014/PDF) to describe all the things people do to blog posts, on the blog post directly, and indirectly via POSSE copies, which then get bridgy/webmention aggregated back to the original. I think it works well in conversation (speech, chat, IRC) to express this general meaning.
 * +1 : (from Ben in person at events/2014-07-30-hwc, he's used the term interactions successfully when explaining to both technical and non-technical people about the set of things from other people below a blog post)
 * +1 : "I definitely prefer interactions, it gives the widest scope". Since writing that on IRC, I have started implementing interactions on the new version of my site, I previously just hooked webmentions into 'comments'.
 * +1 : My first instinct is that "responses" would really only include comments, whereas "interactions" would include likes and reposts. However I would never display a header that says "Interactions," but I might display a header that says "Responses."
 * +1 : Interactions feels for me like a more natural term than eg. "responses" when used to reference actions that targets a page – either that being direct targets such as replies and likes or indirect ones such as reactions like reposts.
 * -1 : this is a very abstracted term, and is focused on the plumbing rather than the human response. It's not that different from using webmentions which I was properly chastised for
 * +1 I feel like "responses" implies that it is directed toward the post creator.  It does not really include mentions, which I do not think are a response.  But since all posts are actions, "Interactions" would be all relations between the current post/action and any other posts/actions.

Responses
 responses  is the term used on some of the earliest work on clustering replies/reposts/likes was done by Sandeep Shetty on the (now out of date and a bit messy) responses page.

If you have opinions or experience with using the term responses, please add them here:


 * +1 Sandeep Shetty: (presumed, as originator of the responses page).
 * +0 undefined: Slight positive. Still sounds like a synonym for "replies", and thus not sufficiently inclusive of the lighter-weight things like reposts/likes/bookmarkings etc. It also sounds a bit too programmer/dev-centric, e.g. HTTP responses. OTOH "Responses" is a decent umbrella heading on a blog post for showing comments, likes, reposts, mentions etc., and I myself have been using it as a header of sorts as recently as 2015-03-10.
 * +0 : "Why is the synonymy of responses and replies problematic?"
 * +1 "Re-visiting my earlier thoughts, I think I prefer 'responses' now. I don't think the confusion with "replies" (as in "comments") will be a problem since replies points to comment"
 * +1 : I like responses, but I saw some of the debate ... I bow to the will of the group.
 * +1 : i asked people on The Tapestries, and they preferred "responses" to "interactions". [we already use "reactions" to mean "likes, favorites, agree, disagree, etc." -- that is, responses that aren't replies]
 * +1 : Bridgy and Ryan's own snarfed.org/responses both use "responses." Ryan doesn't care which term "wins," but "response" is pretty baked into Bridgy, and he probably wouldn't prioritize changing it anytime soon.
 * +1 I've switched to using this, and like it because it refers to the human response more closely.
 * +1 Agree with the rationale that response is the more human term. Interactions is more technical and confusingly generic. I think "I'll respond to this post", not "I'll interact with this post".

Reactions
 reactions  are an umbrella term for reposts/likes, and has some history.

Technorati used to call the full set of things linking to blog posts "reactions", mostly because it was difficult to tell the difference between an actual reply/comment, an offhand mention, a quote, or some other citation. So "reactions" came to mean the set of things which link back to blog posts, but more for technical reasons that actual user-centric meaning reasons.

If you have opinions or experience with using the term reactions, please add them here:


 * +0 undefined: "reactions" now sound almost impulsive rather than thoughtful, and thus may make sense as a grouping term for lighter-weight things like reposts/likes/bookmarkings, exclusive of actual written replies/commentary.
 * +1 : I see two types of reaction, those which have their own content and those which don't. ie. a reply/response/targeted-share (eg. tagging a user)/citation/annotation is a reaction with content and a like/bookmark/favourite/broadcast-share (eg. retweet)/upvote/plusone is a reaction without content. This could also include some action that is personal (eg. bookmarking) and not shared with the network; and flagging/hiding/dismissing a post.

Other
 nods  would be the Old English term for this ... other alternatives?
 * +0  the Saxon/Latin/Greek trichotomy seemed to be missing one here

rel value naming
Some history/brainstorming behind rel value naming in particular for responses has been captured in :
 * rel-values: History