Sometimes when reading something, you agree or disagree with what the person wrote, but sometimes you want to comment, but don't feel like going into an in depth conversation. Perhaps adding an agree or disagree (similar to facebooks "like") people who write stuff can see who agrees or disagrees with what is said. Currently the star system is all we have and that only gets used for the how much people like the topic. It would be nice to have a running count of how many people agree/disagree with each post. Just an idea.
I disagree with this notion. JK! Suggestion reminded me of a time when I posted an especially good deal for BMW on a lease on a "deals" site which gave viewers the chance to vote "thumbs up/down"... I got TONS of thumbs down. People voiced passionate anti-leasing opinions. But as usual, and like the ET Libtards, they hung their hat on some notion usually out of context while ignoring the facts.
I disagree; Have you ever come across the likes on Facebook and wondered what they really mean? For instance; on facebook I recently came accross a picture of a soldier with both his legs cut off. It had 54,000 + likes on it and the caption said "Willing to Risk it All" and a USA Flag in the back. While I applaud the soldier for his courage I really don't want these guys out there loosing their legs when we have so much technology that can take his place. So I had a hard time liking the post; for someone else they probably took a different approach to it and may have liked it for a different reason. Also; many users posts are very detailed. Do you like a post that has 8/10 points correct? Do you leave it at that? I think it hurts conversation more then it starts.
I dont think it would hurt conversation anymore than what people are currently doing and just posting +1. Plus we also have alot of lurkers on ET that just read posts, but are afraid to get into a conversation. For instance...I know I have made posts where I talked about something or put a video up and in 20 minutes or so 100+ people have viewed that post, but nobody has commented either because they are afraid, or they just dont want to get into a conversation like I said(I think there are alot of introverted people on ET that we dont ever hear from) I have also seen guys on here that registered here close to 10 years ago and will have less than 100 posts. Just an idea to get the introverts more involved in ET. When people are more involved, they stay on a site longer which the sponsors like. Maybe run a test in P&R or chit chat. See if it hurts conversation like you said or if you see post counts go up because people are refreshing pages to see if others agreed or disagreed with them.
It's not a bad idea. The problem is that it would turn out exactly like the so-called thread ratings.