The Harker Compliments Facebook page, initiated on January 17, allows students to commend other members of the community without revealing their identities.
Students can send a message containing a compliment to the page, which will then post the remark by tagging the student addressed.
As stated in its first post, Harker Compliments is “devoted to make people happy and nurture a sense of community.” The page is modeled after compliment pages of other local high schools, such as Cupertino High School, Monta Vista High School, and Lynbrook High School. Each of these pages started in mid-January.
The identity of the page creator has not been revealed, and the starter does not plan on sharing it in the future.
“Just think of us an organization to nurture the Harker community,” a post said. “It’s not even about our identities that are important but rather the goals of this site. Just think of us an entity, Harker Compliments.”
In an email interview with TalonWP, the starter of the page said that complimenting others truly makes people feel better about themselves.
“I had the idea [to start a compliments page] for about a month, but it really clicked me to make one when I saw how good people felt about themselves from the compliment sites,” the page creator said.
According to the page creator, the expectations of the page are being met because it is nurturing a sense of community.
“I had hoped that people would like the site and interact with it, which is fortunately what happened,” the creator said. “I think it’s really making people feel good.”
The page starter, however, mentioned that there were a couple issues concerning the privacy level people want and the appropriateness of compliments.
Several students think that sharing compliments through the Facebook page is a nice gesture.
“I think it’s pretty sweet that people actually got out of their way to compliment me and other people,” Andrew Luo (12) said. “I actually don’t know who they are, but a big thank you to them.”
Junior Shivani Gillon agreed, but she mentioned that she thinks it is more practical to compliment friends face-to-face.
“I think it’s cute. It’s a good way to say nice things to your friends,” Shivani said.
Looking into the future, the starter of the page is considering to create a Google website through which people can easily submit compliments for each other.