I've been using my phone to read FT more and more, and I agree! A good mobile app is definitely needed.

1: No

2: Helpful

3: Hmm.. if more than one, very few.. How about "Useful", "Funny", "Very Flyertalk"


4: No.

5: Visible only to mods


6: Yes.. Only logged in users

7: trip reports is the prime target.. would then target "Buzz"

Extra points: Make it searchable.. So I can search for most "liked" posts on blah..

I applaud this move.. Very web2.0.. I have often wanted to high 5 a poster for a great post..

I personally would say no to any type of like, helpful, not helpful and etc button but if there is going to be a "like", "helpful" or other button du jour, I would say no to any type of "negative" (i.e. not helpful) button as all that will do is tick off the poster who made the comment and if a post is truly not helpful and along the lines where it needs to be moderated, then that's what the Report Bad Post button is for.

That will cause serious drama + extra work for mods. No value in that here.

Definitely disagree. There's crappy content, wrong answers or people that reply before clearly reading the post. Many, many valid reasons to say the post wasn't useful. In some forums, you use the balance of +/- votes to determine whether or not the content even appears in the viewing stream. That's likely far too complex for IB to even consider though.

Why not use the current "rate thread" system?

If implemented properly, valuable info could be gained for FT as well. You can see how unhelpful some of your "evangelists" really are, and what an asset other members are.

Voting options spawn conspiracy theories re: people "gaming the system" to always have their content upvoted + content from certain others downvoted. Good luck with that.

I think the Like Button is enough of a worrisome invitation to make FT even more of a popularity contest than it is. But an unhelpful button I think would be quickly abused by those with axes to grind. I'm absolutely not in favor of that idea.

As others have mentioned, we already have a "report bad post" button. That's good enough for me.

Bruce

Personally, I'd rather see someone reply to misinformation with correct information (and ideally cite the source, but I know that's not always possible) instead of just giving a rating on an incorrect post. Corrected information is way more helpful to me than just saying a post is wrong without saying what is right.

This whole "Like" or whatever system just strikes me as a solution in search of a problem and promotes laziness in my opinion. While I don't read every single forum on FT, I would hope that there aren't posters that are purposely posting incorrect information, but I would certainly report to a mod if I saw such activity happening.

Agreed ^ and let's say for whatever reason, a member doesn't want to have their posts liked or "helpfulled"-do they have an option/choice to turn this feature off? I also think that this will be come more of a "status thing" and simply put, what's the difference between a member posting something like "thank you, this was just what I was looking for" vs clicking a like/helpful button? Personally, if it was me, I'd like to see someone post a thank you than see how many likes/helpfuls I rec'd

Originally Posted by bdschobel

As others have mentioned, we already have a "report bad post" button.

That's good enough for me.

Bruce


Agree, folks interested in such things, can link all their pals to a Facebook account and like each other all they wish then and share photos of their pets and latest hairdos, and what they had for dinner last night.

We already have a "Friends" thingy in each FT profile, that I turned off on Day #1 that it was announced many years back. Again those who want FT to be Mini Facebook for some odd reason, can use that function if they wish. It seems to me few use that anyway, so that is a relevant pointer to this discussion.

A reminder to those not here as long as some of us old guard, this "Like" idea was tried before, and was an abject failure here on FT.

Some VERY senior members then, (and some of who still are now in VERY senior roles) abused the system in a concerted and malicious and calculated manner, and Randy needed to bang a lot of heads, issue all sorts of threats to them to play nice, wasted a lot of his time doing so, and pulled the plug on the entire "Reputation" mess.

The present system has worked perfectly well for 16 years, and like many other posters above, cannot see ANY valid reason to change.

One reason FT stays strong and relevant is that it has avoided many faddy things such as this. @:-)

Even user Avatars, found on near all Bulletin Boards, are not deemed necessary by members and TB, and a widened "Titles" selection was voted down only this year by TB, so this idea certainly should join that.

Flyertalk always was and is about travel and points, and is not a social media sideshow.

Glen

I never thought I'd say this, but I find myself in agreement with everything oz just said

Must be Groundhog day.

Same here.

Makes sense.