Originally Posted by
kipper
On Facebook, most have a limited scope of who can see/like/comment on posts. As such, the potential for gaming is reduced.
...but they very much do get gamed as a perceived way to increase the number of people who see public posts. People/businesses who use FB for publicity absolutely DO ask users to "like" their posts. The idea being, rightly or wrongly, that it will increase the odds of the posts showing up in other friends/followers' feeds.
Here, that seems LESS likely, unless I missed a separate part of the proposal that the "like" systems feed back to something. What's to game?
Here, there isn't a a limited scope of who can see/like/comment on posts in most forums.
So?
I think people who assert that other people will be assessing the credibility of posts based on the number of "likes" (or "helpfuls") received are expecting far too much attention to such things.
If there's some broader count of "likes" received, that's something to be gamed -- I suppose it's kind of like all the OMNI/Games idiocy to boost post count -- but I still can't see why anyone should be expected to care about those numbers. I remember other people felt strongly about the whole "OMNI doesn't count" change, and I didn't "get" that either.
I haven't seen anyone suggesting we go to a full reputation system or highlighting posts based on "likes" -- both of which would be more amenable to manipulating the numbers, and I don't see any reason why we should do so and plenty of reasons not to, but I can't see how a a positive-only system, and especially one kept track of only on individual posts, adds any of those issues.
As I said up-thread, a simple system could be good for eliminating "thanks" and "me too" posts, and giving lower-engagement users a way of engaging with threads. Both seem like a plus, and the former in particular might improve the signal-to-noise ratio of some threads.