Originally Posted by
intuition
I believe it was phrased as an wish for a absolutely mandatory feature of the system by those who raised it, not a nice to have.
I saw the original request for it that way, but ultimately I don't think one or a handful of requests counts as by any means a consensus that it's necessary or even desirable.
To be clear, "nice to have" is just my opinion of it; I speak for nobody else.
On views, the purpose of the opt out is to save screen space, to not clutter the view or draw attention to something the user has no interest in
Sure.
and to be presented the threads without any filtering, re-ordering or other manipulation of the discussion flow (should such functions be developed).
Even for those of us who want the basic mechanism, any of the above should be optional (and ideally opt-in, rather than opt-out.)
On participation, the purpose of the opt out is again to keep unnecessary screen objects out of sight, even though this might be a minor issue - a like button can be constructed without stealing much space.
This is fine, although
I could even be implemented as a "Post-tools drop-down", analogous to the thread-tools and the forum-tools drop-downs.
...I think to the extent that this obscures the feature for new users, it's not a plus; I think it's an uncommon opinion in this thread, but one of the reasons I favor a like* button is that it's an engagement mechanism to bring people in who aren't (yet) comfortable taking a more active part in the direct conversation threads.
But more importantly, I think the opt out for participation includes the possibility to not have your posts voted on
IMO, this is disruptive, and to an extent an unwarranted limit on other people's ability to comment on your post. It's rather like having a "don't allow people to quote my replies" checkbox.
not having your posts or username appearing in top-lists or automatically featured on the blogs, frontpage et.c. (should such functions be implemented).
Should such functions be implemented (and to the extent they aren't, already) there's no reason to tie any opt-out for such appearances to the like button, and while I'm more sympathetic to that then "I don't want other people to be able to 'like' my posts" in general, I think that it's an issue that should be addressed separately.
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.
...and for someone truly concerned, they could potentially end up there even without "like" as both of those already exist.
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. Besides, if you disable display any Helpful votes, how would you know whether anyone had voted on your posts?
I'd say it's
potentially worse than over the top -- it could end up being confusing and/or frustrating, not to mention the potential feelings that it's censorship.