Quote from: Mike Christ on April 22, 2013, 12:36:24 AM

Quote from: grue on April 21, 2013, 11:44:00 PM

Quote from: Mike Christ on April 21, 2013, 10:51:12 PM

Free Speech > Nitpicks.

It's not about restricting free speech.

Maybe not, but banning/deleting posts which you don't agree with, for whatever reason, is to be against freedom of expression. I can understand spam (as in, real spam,) and I abhor spam, but when someone has nothing to add to a conversation and yet wants to express that they are in agreement (thus cutting redundancy, i.e., Bill speaks his mind, Jane is in complete agreement because she was going to say the same thing, so instead of saying that same thing, she simply +1's), I don't feel it is up to a higher power (the mods and our beloved admin) to enforce a personal tick. I say this because I've never been bothered by +1, ^, "This", etc., especially when they're in favor of my posts Tongue

Sure, we can force people to make detailed posts. But sometimes a +1 is all someone wants to get off their chest. Perhaps this is an effect of social media, however...it's easy to "Like" a post on Facebook or "thumb-up" a comment on YouTube, right?

To meet in the middle, I'd propose a system in which users can vote up and vote down posts, if for nothing more than to eliminate the need for the +1 posts. There could also be a feature which auto-hides posts with a high amount of downvotes.

Some forums got a "Thank you" feature, where if you like someone's post, you can just click on the link or button and your name gets added to the list of people thanking for that post. I would like that more than a voting system, feels more personal, and doesn't merge disagreements with agreements.