The abuse would be from FT friends rating their buddies whether they agree or not. Hey, this if FT, anything that can be abused will be abused :)

How would they be "rating" them?

If you can see the number of likes, that's rating them. 2 people could post very similar things, yet one of them will have 30 likes and the other might have 1 or 2.

Collecting likes isn't too far from collecting points and miles :)

How is that "collecting" them, though?

As I'm scrolling through my Facebook news feed, I might (might, but often don't) notice that one post has 3 likes and another has 47.

But by the time I scroll down another screen and read other posts, I've completely forgotten how many likes the posts above had. So the number of likes is really without any consequence. It's not like Facebook is collecting and counting the number of likes and displaying it on the user's profile page...and I don't think anyone is proposing doing that here.

The way Facebook has implemented its system seems to work perfectly well, and the same system seems to work perfectly well on other sites (including MP/IF/whatever it's named this week). There's basically zero potential for contention. Why wouldn't that work here?

For the reasons I stated in the post above yours. I also don't like it on MP/IF, though I rarely go there.

"Collecting" implies that the number of likes are counted and assembled for display somewhere.

So likes aren't "collected." Unless you think some people are going to go by every thread on FT with a clipboard and tally all the likes up...

That's what I was talking about... being able to see the number of likes.

Crikey, I think you are over-thinking this likes stuff. Certainly I never saw it as a competition, on other forums I just click the like button if I like it, not because I know the person or not. And I have certainly never compared similar posts with the number of likes. For me it is simple, if I like the post I click "like". That's it.

This is under discussion with Internet Brands to see what can be offered.

Carol/SanDiego1K
Community Director

I've thought about this before, but prefer the clean look of FT and think a like button would add unnecessary clutter and focus.

The News button didn't add unnecessary clutter did it? How do you envisage it damaging the clean look? :confused:

I agree with not going there, and also agree with Mary2e. When she and I agree, then, well, it's a little scary. :D

I can already foresee how "likes" may be used to play games. For example, games around "liking" of an FTer being "suspended".

no member counter - very good idea >

interesting, i may have missed discussion of these >

no who liked >

just "This Post is Liked" etc ? >

also a good point, depending on options >

I would prefer a Helpful button, with per-post count but no per-member count.

I see no great value and significant hazard in showing which members upvoted a post.

IMHO this mild user feedback rewards and therefore encourages posting behavior that pleases other members. I expect the forums to become more valuable and more fun to read when members are taking more care with their posts to earn praise counts.

I wish user feedback could be enabled on a forum-specific basis (e.g. not for for OMNI/PR) but apparently that would be difficult to implement. We might as well give it a try and see if the net value is positive.