I think a rating system for posts would greatly enhance FT's value and also streamline some of the more debated threads; so it would be even better, in my view, to vote up and down each post, such as in some disquus fora.
This would be a somewhat gentle way of saying, without censoring, that the community agree / does not agree with what someone is saying, and I believe it would abbreviate some more "stubborn" discussions.
Amazon has an indirect way to to this, geared to their circumstances, as they push to the forefront the reviews that are more helpfull (this would not be directly possible here) and even, in the discussions that follow, they put as out-of-view a post that had been massively down voted.
I like both ideas either of a disquus type up/down vote (I think FW also has something similar?), or the Amazon-type helpful rating. Maybe the Amazon approach would have more actual utility - I like it on Amazon, at least. Particularly if one could sort by helpful rating in some manner.
I don't particularly like <
rimshot> the MilePoint "like" system. Of course I do use it since it's what they have, but I'm not sure it adds as much value as a couple of the other ideas above. It ties into the "status" system on MP, which again is of questionable value - I wouldn't want to see that setup here on FT, personally.