I wasn't referring to any of your comments, Jay, but the post above mine by f(x).

And of course cons need to be thrown at ideas. I'm just saying the "abuse" flag is being waved a bit too cavalierly IMO (in general). We can't let potential for abuse stump brainstorming. I challenge anyone who quickly and easily falls into the "I'll just respond with the abuse argument" category to think a step or 2 further.

I know it was your idea ,but still my opinion is valid. I am free to explain the world around me in the way I see it either good or bad in respect to my logic. Building my concepts doesn't state it is correct and shouldn't be considered right into others point of view. This also doesn't mean my opinion is less valuable than others.

To show & illustrate why I think this is bad here some of them:

1- This will get users into rewarding every single posts they can find by "Thanks" ,even if there is limits here. All of this is in order to get some karma.
2- There won't be any point to post any thing useful if you are going to get thanked anyway, and why you should? (old users might , but think about new users)
3- This will destroy the community we know by increasing the useless topics/posts which its goal is to get as much intention as it could in order to receive the highest "thanks" possible.
4- This will make the people more lazy.
5- We aren't talking about the only abusing it can be done, but also with the potential of determining which member is more valuable to the community more than others (See what n900 discount thing did)


The way it is now is good and more than good. I think it should be left as it is. When an important need would be required for such improvement then at that time it would be necessary to think about.

I respect your right to an opinion, and I think you're missing my point there but I won't belabor it.

Suffice to say I highly doubt your extreme scenarios will come to pass, and if they did, would be a small and very rare exception... just like Thanks abuse now.

But I do appreciate your input, regardless of my opinion.

My biggest issue with this idea is that Thanking! isn't a content generating activity. The only two other non-content activities that we count karma for are application ratings and news ratings. Both of which serve useful purposes beyond acknowledging another user's contribution (helping to sort the useful from the not in News and Downloads).

karma is gained from participation in the community.

in the same way that the giving thanks could be abused, so could any of the other mechanisms.
I could just as easilu setup an automailer or spambot to send fake bug reports or community discussions or threads here on tmo.
the community will act within themselves to cure abuses - usually with a quiet word to someone who appears to be abusing it.

getting karma for thanking people is like rewarding youself for work done by others IMO

I am new to the community and have to say that I find the "Thanks" option useful as a heuristic which replies in a thread are worthwhile to read if I don't want to go through every single post of long winded topics. If you are new to a community and don't know the reputation of individual posters it is of help.

@GeneralAntilles
It actually could be a content generating activity. The sidebar could not only show the most active topics but also the most useful posts (threads) of the last week e.g. calculated based on the number of thanks.

hahaha

i just did a little experiment!
I gave thanks to GeneralAntilles for a comment - then took it away again!
its the perfect "No Thanks!" button from the other thread

@Texrat:
It's ok, I know I was kinda rude with my comments.

@lcuk: This is a nice feature, you can temporary increase someone's karma and in one day you takes his dreams away (Actually I had this idea, but I though it was a waste of time ,still good one)

I think the whole thing should be revamped and replaced with an academy award-like system, with people affected being the people voting the rewards. Rather than thanks, people identified as users rather than developers should vote for those they find most helpful.

Developers should vote for those THEY find most helpful; obviously they would know better who is helping them than users who never talk to those people would.

So criteria for what deserves rewarding should be drawn up and the people giving the rewards should be chosen.

No amount of manipulation of sh.t data will give other than sh.t results.

Thanks should remain as a time-saving, personal step, but should not be ground up and used as compost for the reward system.