I don't know what the best solution is but ratio of thanked posts to total posts was a very useful indicator of the quality of a users post. It helped instill some confidence that what they are posting may in fact have some merit.

The (not)helpful numbers are also somewhat useful in this respect but since they require looking at the posters profile I suspect that people rarely see them.

Anyway I think that *something* that is clearly visible is needed, and that the original "thanked" system was fine.

Evo2.

5 members found this post helpful.

If the forum would show the (useful posts / total posts) ratio, yes. But then again it is essentially the same as showing the number of thanks, so I am afraid that would not be acceptable for you. And I'd hate the idea to start at a ratio of 0.00035.

jlinkels

2 members found this post helpful.

Suggestion:
I'd restore "thanks" and jettison "useful/not useful".

Rationale:
Thanks (which is inherently 'positive') can definitely be a useful metric.

"Not useful", on the other hand, can easily be a way for somebody to anonymously say "I think you're full of crap". Without ever having explaining why - or ever having to give much thought to the issue.

If I disagree with somebody (or if they disagree with me), I've never been bashful about discussing it in the thread. Everybody benefits from the back/forth and, in my experience, it generally results in a positive outcome. Of the two metrics ("Thanks" vs "useful/not useful") I honestly believe the former is more likely to encourage discussion - civil discussion - than the latter.

IMHO... PSM

4 members found this post helpful.

I think what he meant was displaying statistics like this: "jlinkels's Posts have been rated good 79 out of 83 times."
But I would still prefer "thanks" instead of all this ! I have explained my view of "helpful" postings in post:10.

1 members found this post helpful.

Well, I'm out. The only reason I would spend 5 or 10 minutes instead of 10 or 20 seconds on a post was because I wanted to keep my "Posts" versus "Thanked" count as even as I could (which was hard, with as many zero-reply threads I hit from One Post Wonders that never responded).

I really like the community here, had an account for years, and over the past thirteen months have found myself in a position where I could finally contribute back.

The "Thanks" system is addicting, and keeps bringing me back.
It also has the side-effect of ensuring I do follow-up posts on threads to make sure the issues are taken care of.

(Would be great if I could mark someone's thread as [SOLVED] every once in a while).

So long, and thanks for all the fish, guys. I'll check back in a few weeks to see if it's back, if not, I'll just move on.

Have a good one Jeremy!

P.S: HP's forums have sort of had a "thanks" system in place for years. Even the (ugh) Ubuntu forums have bean counts. ANYTHING would be nice.

2 members found this post helpful.

It is disappointing.

i agree with anisha. it is human nature.

second thing is personally it shows me how much contribution i did to make helpful posts (if making helpful post is contribution)which helps member to solved their questions.

2 members found this post helpful.

Though I do not come here to gather post count and thanks count, but the feel good factor does matter. But personally it does not affect too much. And it does not bother me if there is no thanks button. Its all fine as far as I am concerned. I can still thank the person using a post. And indeed, many other forums have this facility. But LQ need not go their way and have the facility just because others have.
It does not matter to me. I will still keep coming here for help and helping others as much as I can.
And as far as post count and thanks counts go, they can never determine the merit of the knowledge or expertise of a member.
I can go and thank all the useless posts made and increase the count for no reason, or just because I feel.( though I have never done that). So that just does not matter.
Its upto you jeremy, how you want to rate a member's contribution. And its fine with me even if ratings are completely disabled.

What exactly was the problem with having a 'thanks' system? Are there cliques of users who needlessly thank each other all day to artificially inflate their perceived usefulness?

xeleema, that's kind of extreme... I wouldn't leave the forum over it just out of spite.. But I do understand for a lot of users it'll be easier to say 'google whatever', instead of really spelling out a solution with snips of config files and a lot of details.

Thanks for the continued feedback. It's clear that many members did derive value out of the thanks system. It's also clear that a better system is needed and we'll start working on that now. I'm leaning toward some kind of LQ-wide reputation system, which will work in conjunction with "Did you find this post helpful". Phase two would be to make the system work on both an LQ-wide and forum-specific manner. Since it will likely take a little while to enable this system, I'm happy to enable the Thanks system until we can put something into place, but with the understanding that it will almost certainly go away in the future.

--jeremy

1 members found this post helpful.

I did think of the thank count as a measure of how helpful I was.

But I like the idea of a "reputation" system.

Please see http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...system-828421/

I'd like as much feedback on this feature as possible. Thanks.

--jeremy

English is not my native language so please be patient with me ,if I put it in the wrong way .
But what is LG main goal ?
To crate a "reputation" for each member how great is knowledge is ?
In other words how much weight do you give to a advice you get from that member .
Or is LQ a place where people can try to find out if his/here problem is already solved and all he/she has to do searching LQ database .
In the last case a solved button is very use full .
And search argument become very important .

About the "Thank You" system : The 'Thanks button' thanks
was often the only response after an answer.
I.e. it was used like kind of [SOLVED] marking / response.
.. In that way I found the "Thank You" system very useful.


About the "Did you find this post helpful" :
The "No" button is often used by people, just annoyed by something,
or if they don't get the answer, they expected.
And sometimes if you ask for further information, instead of answering
their may be impossible question.
..

actually i can see that as being a negative point against the thank you system because it encourages lazy people to simply hit the 'thank you' button instead of taking a few seconds to give a constructive reply, the whole point of this forum is to solve people's problems (among other things) and if the op doesn't ultimately reply with HOW the problem was ultimately solved, nobody learns anything (well, except the op perhaps), so i would have to disagree with that being a positive.

I don't think so ! If I clicked a thanks on your post, how would know that it was I who clicked the thanks ?

Thus it becomes necessary for me to write a thankyou note...even after clicking the thanks !