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Should it be possible to "react" to one's own posts?
We now have reactions.
However, I notice that there seems to be nothing stopping a user from "reacting" to their own posts.
For some reactions, this might make sense. For example, an outdated answer might be kept around for reference or for the benefit of some subset of readers, but the user posting it could use a reaction to mark it as "outdated". They might even want to mark their own answer as "dangerous" if there's something in particular about it that someone attempting what it describes needs to be fully aware of up front.
But "worked for me"?
It's not like one would likely propose an answer without at least being fairly certain that it works for solving whatever the question is asking about; and if one does, then hopefully a wrong answer would be downvoted for not being helpful.
Should it be possible to react to one's own posts? Should certain reactions be possible to apply to one's own posts and others only to posts by other users?
1 answer
Good question. A reaction doesn't bestow benefits (reputation, progress toward abilities, or preferential placement on the page), so in one sense reacting to your own post is harmless. On the other hand, it does add an attention-grabbing marker, and it might make sense to restrict that.
I've been thinking of the "works for me" reaction as a solution to the "accepted answer" problem -- we've heard a desire for the asker to be able to mark an answer (or mark the question as resolved), and other Q&A platforms have the "green checkmark" concept. But we also felt that this shouldn't depend on the asker, who sometimes never comes back to follow up, and we felt that a "works for me" marker that anybody could use would meet the need and then some.
So, all that said, should you be able to mark your own answer as "works for me"? It seems handy in the case of self-answers, particularly where somebody asked a question and later figured it out and came back to post an answer. Other people who are scanning the page for vetted solutions will be looking for the marker and would miss a working self-answer if we blocked that.
We could probably add "prevent self-reactions" to the configuration of individual reactions, so a community could allow self-declaration for outdatedness but not workingness. I didn't give this much thought during design and testing, I admit. Or is it sufficient to show who that reaction comes from? We already show who's reacting; would some additional indicator for the author of the post be helpful?
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