So disagreement with the "no thanks" suggestion equates to a head in the sand???

This really doesn't make a lot of sense to me in the model proposed. And nor does it give me good feelings about how it would work in practice. My current job involves working with a large site with an idea of 'karma', and in practice, adding negative karma never really worked out well for us. We're in the process of trying to remove it, actually.

Thanking people is a positive action. You don't want to add negativity onto that, because instead of helping control idiocy, it'll lead to cliques forming.

Sorry, i took your comment "The current forum "personality" is fine IMO." out of context. You were referring to not turning into slashdot, rather than saying it was not changing at all.

Sorry for the pointless post, too, i just realized my mistake there.

This is healthy.

It's exactly for these view exchanges I posed the Q in the first place. My own views are *obviously* idiosyncratic and draconian and totally out of step. It's why I joined the community, in fact... I can/could see the problems with 'no thanks' but wanted some other viewpoints on it.

So, thanks for the conflicting views These are, in fact, what makes such a site work.

Robust discussion, it's something like a morning swim in a frozen lake...

For the record, I don't know how it would work, I think that as initially suggested it wouldn't, in fact, but please, if you like, keep the ideas coming because I also think the community will evolve and thinking about how to manage that is a good thing.

Thanks Flandry.

Look, I'm the last one to want to shoot down an idea. But there's history here-- this one has come up numerous times, and every argument pro and con hashed over ad nauseum.

I happen to think fair balance is struck between Thanks and Report Post. There is abuse of Thanks of course but the merits outweigh it by far-- I'll bet the abuse is no more than 10% of all Thanking activity. But human nature holds that the converse will not likely be true; as much as any of us may like to think that people will be grownups, I guarantee you that "No Thanking" will exhibit significantly more abuse than Thanking-- to the point of being detrimental (imagine the wars back and forth... and do you want equal visibility of No Thankers as we do with Thankers? It's only fair, and what would such a thing do to the fabric of this place?)

Adding "no thanks" seems like a simple thing, but it would truly change the character of t.m.o. In addressing the influx of new members with phone-oriented needs, we certainly need to examine various means of moderation but so far the current system is working. I'm all for being proactive, but not to the point of paranoia.

Oh, I forgot to add, I'm paranoid.

(not really. I hadn't realized I came out that way)

I searched, and probably not hard enough, but couldn't find previous discussion. Mea culpa. Sorry for wasting your time.

There's already a "No Thanks", it's achieved by not thanking a post.

What some people seem to want is a way to erase other people's thanks because they disagree with them. It's upto other users to decide what posts they want to thank and I see no reason to "unthank" something.

If you want to thank it then do so. If it's not for you then move along.

Hmmm... this is a difficult one. I've been on plenty of forums that implemented karma/thanks/popularity votes, and they were harmless. The difference was that they were just that - popularity votes. In the grand scheme of things, whether I am popular or not on an internet forum doesn't really amount to much.

Here, it's different. 'Thanks' (and 'karma votes') actually mean something, in terms of whether one gets discounts, use of developer devices or an invite to summit. Which is a little challenging for the average new-user to get their head around.

I'm not sure I like the idea of a 'negative thanks' ('smiting' I believe it's called on other boards) for exactly the same reason. It's going to be seen as grudging and mean spirited. On the other hand, I accept that people awarding Thanks (and hence karma) for fluffy, meaningless posts must irritate the hell out of people slowly building karma by making good, meaningful contributions to the community.

I think my suggested solution might be to leave the 'thanks' system in place, but take it out of the Karma calculation altogether. Then implement something else on the board which is a 'Karma point', but which takes more effort, maybe even a 'give reason' (such as you have to do for reporting a post - I'm running out of ways to say 'spam' creatively!)

That way I can still 'quick click' the Thanks button for someone I agree with or who has made me laugh, without it being a huge thing for their place in the community. And I can award a 'karma point' for someone who's responded to a request for information, help or a software request provided I can explain why.

It's a more complicated system but might solve some of the ill-feeling.

I happen to think that simply lopping off a percentage of Thanks to handle expected "noise" resolves the frivolous Thanking-- but I am intrigued by the idea of having users enter a rationale.

Maybe the answer is two-fold: allow Thanks with no comment, and it has no Karma value. Any Thanks with an accompanying comment (which could be hidden or contained in a dropdown list) adds to Karma.

EDIT: not trying to steal RevdKathy's thunder-- looks like we were essentially talking about the same thing in different ways, so please give her credit.

Relax, it's all good. Even if previous threads exist, sometimes a new thread being posted with different words bring about new ideas. So, no waste of time here, man.