I would hope so--you deserve a lot of thank you notes by PM and email rather than just clicks on some "like" icon. You contribute a lot of information to the AA forum and also help many people behind the scenes, especially those who were caught in all of the recent account audits.

When the subject was brought up in 2013, FTers were split for/against approx 50/50%. When it was bumped up in 2014, FTers were split for/against approx 50/50%%. When the poll was first started, the nos were ahead of the yeses. That's now 59/39/2 yes to no (and some no opinion). With the poll, the sitewide announcement & mention in TM driving traffic, there are more yes votes. But the difference between before & now is still only 9%. I'm not sure I'd call a 9 point increase over 50/50 (especially given all the visibility) a huge clamoring for this feature.

Some are suggesting trials, but quite frankly I'd still question whether this is something that's of paramount concern/acclaim for implementation to go to trial.

If TB thinks it is, then it needs to first address/answer the very legitimate questions and concerns BEFORE a trial is implemented. If it can't, then it shouldn't move forward. And it's ridiculous to suggest doing a trial in a few selected forums. If TB wants to implement something that's going to impact all of FT, then the trial has to be across ALL of FT.

Cheers.

RBP also doesn't provide an easy way to keep a record of which posts/usernames were reported (and the forum and thread where the post appeared) or the comments that were communicated. One could print the page with the comment square before submitting it, but you can't go back from that information to check whether the post was ever removed or edited.

Often a political poll has a margin of error of plus or minus three percent. Yet these polls have carefully constructed wordings of the question and tend to use stratified samples of various (demographic and other) subgroups or responders ("oversampling" the smaller groups) within the targeted population.

FT isn't that sophisticated :p :D

Cheers.

Of course not. My point is that the error of margin in this poll is surely much greater than the customary plus or minus three percent that we commonly see in professional political polls.

Maybe; maybe not. But I think TB members will be looking at both the poll & the discussion threads when evaluating if there's a next step at all and/or what it might be if there is one. I have more faith in TB members than some of the professional politicians :D

Cheers.

Huh? You think it's likely ("Maybe; maybe not") that this poll with its response rate is more accurate than polls constructed and conducted by professional pollsters (not professional politicians, there is a difference between the statistical consultants and the candidates)?

I have faith in both FTers & TB members that they'll view the poll & the discussions in the threads discussing the like button with proper consideration. If you'd like to start a discussion re: how FT polls compare with polls done by professional pollsters, I'd recommend you start a thread in Omni PR ;)

Cheers.

I don't know how you could say that with a straight face, because I sure couldn't do it. Just because there's no downvote button, the mere presence of an upvote type mechanism will form factions. The only thing the downvote mechanism will do is just make the existing mess bigger. Not having the downvote mechanism will still result in factions who just compete for more upvotes (or as I would say, <you can't say that here> with whatever mechanism is available to them)

Respectfully-- about your math....

The difference between [50% in favor to 50% opposed] to [59% in favor to 39% opposed] sure isn't 9%

What do they allegedly win by having the most upvotes?

(For that matter, do we even want a per-user upvote counter?)

Bragging rights, and yes, some will want them.

What I was trying to say tactfully is that it's pretty hard to be a good TB member and ignore this turnout and 60/38 vote split. Furthermore, history is not on the side of those against the Like button. It's clearly been massively successful in a wide range of applications. It's crowdsourcing at its finest.

Saying it can be a tool of trolls or nasty people is a non-sequitur as *posts* can also be a tool of suchlike. We already have the mod system in place. If the content of the post is acceptable according to FT rules and mods have not taken action, liking a certain post should be acceptable as well. If a post is within the rules but has a mean spirit behind it, a post with a nicer spirit should be made by people who are those sorts of people and the likes can proceed apace on each respective post. The bottom line is, any method of communication is simply a reflection of those communicating. We can no more stop mean people by limiting ourselves to morse code than we can by refusing to implement Likes.

The bottom line, IMO, is that Likes are a massively helpful innovation that helps quality content rise to the top (SlickDeals, a similar forum, does an outstanding job with this) via rewarding quality work (through reputation scoring) and via curation. Furthermore, a clear majority of FTers wants it.

There are only 700 members on FT? Wow. ;)

That's a good point. While I'm sure the proponents of this addition are acting in good faith and believe this will be a positive step forward, I'm not sure people are considering the downside of adding this function.

No, a majority of FT members who have voted favor this addition.