Alternatively, posters could be limited to just a couple of likes a day and likes would be spent theoretically on better postings.
The system is asymmetrical because you can't give a "dislike" to a message. Makes it more difficult to judge whether a post is helpful or only popular in the eyes of the buddies of the poster.
Correct, thus if you only had a couple of likes to hand out daily (non-cumulative), it would make people more careful with what they like. There is no premium on likes right now. They are like water.
I understand that your intention is to make people more careful and selective in when to hand out their scarce likes. However, I meant my comment slightly different. A messages could be posted where a few members like it, and it would show at that message. But to an awful lot of other members this message could be complete cr@p and they can't assign this "dislike" to that message. Net result: it appears that the message is a helpful message. This is the asymmetry I was hinting at.
While I understand your point, I think having dislikes would foster negativity on a largely positive site.
I suspect Baron would have metrics on this kind of thing and it may be that "dislikes" inhibit number of posts which would certainly not benefit ET.