As I said, the latter is not something I support. No consequences should flow from vote count of your posts, other than a possible inclusion in TalkMail or a curated FT home page. Both of those are built by people who can read.
The former sounds difficult to implement, but I will ask. The software would need to allow or not allow the button post by post, according to the preferences of the poster. That seems over the top, especially given that only upvotes are allowed.
Well, so you are saying that
a)
only usage is instant feedback
b) except possibly some things you find useful
That is exactly why I think the opt-out must be on the table from start.
Even to only display instant feedback between viewer and poster, the software will need to keep track of each and every upvote ever made. So when someone says "
Hey, we have all this data stored, why not put it to use" and "
The xxx-site is doing it and we should too" and "
It is such a small step from what we do today, so no one can have anything against that" I think there should be some sort of insurance for us who provide the content to this site to opt-out from usage we are not comfortable with.
I don't know why an opt-out should be more difficult to implement. The software needs to render one like-button for each and every post it displays. It will be unique to each post, because the software must know which like button you click on.
It will also need to know who is watching the like button (because if you already liked a post, I guess you are not allowed to like it again, right?).
So to render each and every like button the software already needs to keep track of both the viewer and the post. And the software already keeps track of the owner of each and every post. The step to check the preferences of the owner of the post shouldn't be difficult.
The software already checks the viewer preferences before rendering posts (ignore list and signatures). Checking the poster preferences can't be more difficult.
Besides, if you disable display any Helpful votes, how would you know whether anyone had voted on your posts?
Because I'm suddenly featured on the front page, referenced in a blog or put on a toplist or my post is suddenly used out of context. Your second sentence says you already have intentions to use the collected data in other ways than just to provide feedback.