Originally Posted by
tom911
There was some type of rating system here years ago and it did not go well. Birthday threads were given thumbs down, for instance, and the whole system was anonymous. Unless you can come up with some way to have the system not be anonymous, not sure there's much to be gained here. Might check in the Technical Issues forum to see if the tech support staff can even set up such a thing before asking the Talk Board to implement it.
Milepoint does have software that allows you to give a thumbs up to a thread, but the positive there is that your screen name appears at the bottom of the post you rated and it identifies you. It can't be done anonymously.
Thanks for the background! I have a friend who runs a very active sports blog and uses Disqus to host and moderate comments. Disqus does have an option to identify posters who have given up or down votes to various posts. Their screen names appear when you mouse over the respective "up" and "down" buttons. I'll ask how he set up the capability and write to the tech folks with the information, as perhaps it can be duplicated. Then, they and the Talkboard can decide whether it's something that is worth pursuing. I'm not sure a down vote button is necessary, as it is more effective to voice disagreements and the reasons for them in an actual post. An up vote button, however, might help cut down on people essentially repeating each other's responses.