Originally Posted by
intuition
The ideas to use the votes for other purposes than immediate feedback, makes the audience fuzzy. When poster understands that the post may appear somewhere else or be used for an alternate purpose, it will make some poster (male posters in general, as suggested by study) more careful and limited in their speech.
I have accepted and now agree with the arguments against any kind of reputation compilation. That's just one way in which this thread has been helpful.
As to a extremely useful post ending up in TalkMail after it is selected by a human editor, that would happen with or without a reader feedback button. No difference.