Very good point. Even when I am asking questions, whatever answer I get even if its off topic, I learn something, and thats the most rewarding thing about being here.
Me too. I don't like being the only one who answers, because it is those other viewpoints that make for interesting discussions and exploration of the solution space.
Now, it can be bewildering to new members and anyone not used to the thread getting too deep into the details if the OP does not actively participate to focus the discussion, and I can definitely see the underlying problem the suggested "designated Expert forum users" and now displayed "Thanks: counts" are supposed to solve: helping new members (and everyone else, really) with tools on how to differentiate between useful answers and less than useful ones.
I don't like the numerical count being shown at all, because it is a step too far toward social gamification. Not intentionally, perhaps, but we've seen in other forums how that ends up being the end result.
My preferred suggestion (separate Agree button) is not technically available at that point, so instead, to solve that underlying problem the recent change and the suggested designated Expert forum users are intended to solve, I am suggesting tweaking the Thanks button a bit, adding to it an orthogonal
social purpose, making it into an
Thanks/Agree button instead. (Or, if you like,
Endorse. I don't like it, but it describes the intent, and me fail English anyway.)
The trick is that the numerical count is not shown, and that it is up to the readers to decide whether the members who pushed that for a specific post are thanking or agreeing with it (or what kind of mix between the two is intended). Since there is no post, it cannot be too severe an endorsement; just equivalent to a nod, a brightening expression and agreement noises. For anything actually important or meaningful, we express ourselves in text.
Because there is no numerical count, new users may initially look for answers that have several endorsers. That is okay, even though it is kinda-sorta misleading. They will soon discover that depending on the subject, it is a good idea to look at what the endorser has posted in other threads, because that helps evaluate the "worth" of the endorsement in each individual case. For example, like if I Nominal Animal were to endorse a post in the TEA thread, while I have basically no test equipment myself, and don't participate in fixing or calibration topics, it's obvious that my endorsement is more of the "Thank you, I find this informative!" sort, than any kind of "I lend credence to this post", because I have none (no credence with respect to test equipment, that is).
See? I am proposing a minimally invasive, delicate change (mostly affecting past Thanks, which does worry me) that is easy to fine-tune later on, being just text in the forum interfaces. Yet, because of the above, I truly believe it would at least partially address the underlying issues, and move "posting culture" here in a positive direction (because it makes endorsing existing answers easier, thus hopefully reducing the cases where a suggestion post "ends" a thread with the asker having no way to tell if that is because nobody endorses it, or because others see the existing answer as sufficient but don't want to post a "+1" message).
Now, I know I am repeating this. The reason I'm doing so is not because I want Dave to implement this. The reason is that I want to see why others believe this would not work. There are a small number of members who seem to agree this might work –– at least would be test-worthy, similarly to the Thanked: counter now shown ––, but others seem to disagree, or at least do not endorse the idea. I want to know why, because as I above explain, I believe it would solve the underlying problem; and knowing why others disagree would be very valuable information to myself. I am perfectly aware that I may be wrong, and since there are lots of members all over the world here, knowing the reasons to the disagreement would be much more valuable than knowing they (or even how many) disagree.
See?
Knowing someone disagrees is not useful information.
Knowing the reasons they disagree is valuable information.
Knowing someone endorses an idea, even mildly, may be useful information.
Knowing the reasons they endorse the idea is very valuable information.
The second and fourth points are conveyed in posts. The third one is useful, if there is a way to evaluate each endorsement by looking their other posts; the
number of endorsements is not actually useful, because the 'value' of each individual endorsement varies from not useful to useful. Knowing there are
X of them, without any way to quantify them, is deceptive: it
looks and feels useful, but is not in reality. As to the fourth point, because there is an infinity of reasons for disagreement, from the color of the bike shed to the typos in the post, with only a small fraction of reasons being valid (technical points related to the subject at hand), it is far more likely that the first (downvotes) will be misused, provably so if there is a numerical counter shown. Downvoting only works if you only measure popularity. Trying to use it for anything else is futile.