Originally Posted by
camachinist
Since the forum functions fine for discussion without likes or post votes, there must be a reason why this issue was grown from the original post where a member opined that such a system could cut down on extraneous posts which do nothing more than like a previous post.
I won't speak for IB and don't know the political matrix of FT; in the case of our forum, our site owner initiated the like system and share system (scripts for sharing posts with social media) to grow the forum's commercial aspects, both to increase his incremental revenues from ads as well as to maintain and grow the forum's ranking in its class, as it is currently at or near (depends on reporting period) the highest search engine ranking in its subject matter.
If this is totally member-driven, please disregard. In our case, the members didn't care at all but, well, given a new toy, it got played with, some using it to build and others to tear down. Human nature I guess.
While FT CD gets the word on whether this feature stays in trial and then gets pulled or whether it gets more broadly implemented, there is no doubt in my mind that this tool was created for the purposes you mention -- that being to grow the commercial aspects for IB. That is not a reason to be for or against this rating/reputation game on FT, but this feature may get this place closer to making FT more like Facebook, a site where the members are a product for the site owner/operators to sell to others. And I'm really not interested in being someone else's product for sale more than I already am.
Speaking of human nature on FT, I have no doubt that this tool will turn out to be very "helpful" for exacerbating the challenges that already take place on FT, as between the following types of groups: company apologists vs non-apologists; DHS/TSA apologists vs non-DHS apologists; other Party A vs Party B.