Originally Posted by
nkedel
I love StackExchange, and something like it for specific questions/answers on FT might be good adjunct if separated from regular conversational forum content (they also have their own Travel board, I haven't actually checked it out.)
As I see it, a stripped-down version of what StackExchange uses might be a good idea: a mechanism to rank posts, but totally divorced from member ranking/reputation. By the way, I have on occasion participated in their travel area. From what I've seen, it tends to have far more basic, introductory questions, but certainly has potential to be much more (as evidenced by their other areas, especially the more technical ones).
Originally Posted by
nkedel
Upvoting/downvoting, or a more serious reputation mechanism (as opposed to a more Facebook-like "like/helpful" button to just clear out "me too/thanks/etc" replies) are unhelpful if the intent is to keep the format as a conversational forum.
To me, "like" and "helpful" are completely different (hence "like/helpful" makes no sense), because as I see "like" is Facebook-style social media, while "helpful" (as on TripAdvisor or to some extent StackExchange) ranks the post content. (Both TA and SE use this as part of a member ranking and badging system, which I think would be a bad idea for FT.)
As I've said before, I see zero benefit to FT in adding more social media mechanisms. I also see a differentiation between conversational forums and informational ones. I also see a problem with very large informational threads that people would like to mine for useful information. It is this view that makes me thing FT could benefit from a mechanism to rank posts that is not part of any reputation system.