On this note I would like to suggest an additional complementary system of sorts, where say every member has a certain weekly quota of X 'like' credits, which will expire at the end of the week if unused (and reallocated the next again). Because of the (i) expiration and (ii) weekly quota refresh tagged to such credits, members are much less likely to hoard them. Different member tiers could possibly be allocated different amounts of like credits, if higher-ranked members are presumably believed to be 'better' judges of content, on average.

I sincerely believe having some form of complementary channel for rank-up will help ease some of the tension between old/new members simply due to the challenge of ranking up and will prove beneficial for btctalk over the longer-term. For comments or views, pls.