So - first of all, I feel like I should not forget I express my appreciation for all your work here, in the midst of all my #featurerequests, and say that this, plus the other new toys, seem like they'll be a lot of fun.
My one piece of feedback on this would be about reactions costing credits. I would personally rather we not disincentivize liking and reacting to posts, even in a small way. I'd even propose we go the other direction, in terms of rewarding both the reactor and reactee with credits, to promote engagement all around.
I'd also guess that actually good posts may be more likely to get like/love/laughing, whereas K/Scheyer are more ironic reactions, so it may make sense to weight them accordingly. But that's more of a minor detail.
I considered it both ways and I'll explain why I went the way I did.
The first question I asked is what is the function of the DF credit? Is it a rep system? Well, no. We already have reaction scores that act as a rep system. Does it represent engagement or seniority? No, we have post counts and join dates that do that. So what it is? To my mind, it's a tool to incentivize posting over everything. Posts are the lifeblood of this place. So the obvious first step was to reward posts with credits and better posts with more credits.
The second question is why should members want credits? To show off how rich they are? Even if it's just a function of being around longer? Seems superfluous when post counts and reaction scores already exist. To show off how smart they are via sportbook winnings? Maybe, but not everyone uses the sportsbook. The conclusion I came to was that members should want credits so they can access the fun and unique features of this site. The aforementioned sportsbook and the custom reactions. These are features that people enjoy using even if they don't post at all. Which, to me, is sort of a problem. Posts are the goal. So if you want to react, you need to be posting occasionally too. A single post can generate a level of board activity that a reaction simply cannot. Or if you go broke in the sportbook, but want to keep making bets, you need to be posting occasionally.
That was kind of the primary motivation for charging for reactions.
But on top of that, I considered some other problems of earning credits for reacting:
Is a reaction genuine? Or are people just reacting to get more credits?
Runaway credits. Earning with such ease, with nothing to spend them on, just results in bloated credit totals that have no meaning. This is also why reactions cost more than they earn.
Your point about reaction weights is well taken. I think I should treat the K/Scheyer reactions more like the dislike. They are expensive to use, but they're not necessarily positive reactions, so they shouldn't be earning you much.
Maybe changing K/Scheyer reactions to cost 10 earn 1 and changing basic reactions to cost 5 earn 3? Keep the Likes at cost 2 earn 1.
