The people who oppose the like button are so vociferous in their stated objections, it is difficult to gauge from reading this thread what the general community of Flyertalker's would prefer based solely on reading this thread.

The poll, last I checked, suggests a 54-43 majority in favor of some type of Like button, yet a few active posters here seemingly stand guard over the discussion's progress, on alert with shoe already in hand, ready to smash any cockroach of an idea in favor that dares to venture out on the forum floor.

These ever active voices of dissent are reason enough not to incorporate any kind of like button here, because the costs in moderator and Talkboard time to administer the system, and adjust and adjudicate the sure to be found faults with what ever system is ultimately devised, is just not worth it. Yes, as one person posted a month or so ago, giving up on the idea can be considered as caving in to being bullied, but there is a bigger picture:

I'd rather the moderators devote their time to parsing out tangents from wandering threads, creating new threads from the removed remnants in order to preserve the information posted, while making it findable to others in the future by moving it to a forum where the topic can be expected to be found. This happened to some topics I participated in a while back, and I was quite impressed at that level of forum horticulture.

It takes time, effort and dedication to cultivate a high level of usability in an open forum with as broad of a scope as FT, and I'd rather see these Herculean efforts the moderators make to keep it all together devoted toward managing content, rather than managing the feelings of those who are fearful of a Like system.

In most forums I've participated in where a Like system is implemented, it is simply done and it is no big deal. Nothing like the federal case the decision has evolved to here at FT, apparently over many YEARS, as long time FT'ers have noted. While participants on the other forums genuinely feel appreciated when they have managed to post something useful that generates positive feedback in the form of Likes, these same people also appear to have built a foundation of self esteem independent of the number of likes given to their posts, so the administrative intricacies of the like system are simply not that big of a deal to them. The idea of "gaming" a Like system? It just doesn't come up. Period. There is more to life!

Here on FT however, any kind of Like system appears doomed to be a black hole sucking away moderator and Talkboard brain time from other duties that make FT the vanguard of airline travel forums. For example, the ongoing editing of the Wiki's at the top of many topic threads to incorporate new information as presented and subsequently vetted by other users in the relevant discussions. That is really cool. I don't see that very much in other forums. And I imagine that it takes a lot of time to keep the topic wiki's updated like that.

At this point in the discussion, I think the distraction of trying to find a consensus on a Like system is not worth the benefit. Part of me simply can't believe that policing a Like count is such a big deal to some. On the other hand, FT has many other mechanisms to manage and highlight good content (two of which were cited in this post) that require moderator attention in order to work. I'd rather see the moderator's focus remain on the good job they have already been doing in those regards.