QFT
Agreed. In spades.
Does a like mean you like the poster, the post’s position, or the post’s writing?
Seems to me a “like” mostly means you’re too damned lazy (or clueless) to say anything useful. Better to lurk than to clutter up the place with useless "+1"s.
For somebody like Facebook, which exists to monitize your every entry, “likes” serve the very valuable purpose, for them, of highlighting what’s “trending” so they can sell ads on it for more money. What any of the rest of us get out of this is bupkiss.
Right on!
Bird.
Rock Lobster.
I’m boards with like buttons. I have never witnessed this.
I swear the luddite Dopers just have this fear of modern message board features that they assume every message board the implements them automatically turns into a cesspool. That and near fetish for the written word.
Funny, you’d think the idea that we’re so special and smart here would conflict with the idea that idea that we’d automatically abuse any new feature.
It means you like that particular post. The meaning is pretty clear.
Better a like button than “+1” or “me too”. I know I’ve frequently looked for a like button when I’ve wanted to show appreciation for a post I’ve liked and didn’t want to add a “me too”.
Cite?
All I know is my gut says maybe.
Well, clearly I’d use it properly, it’s the rest of you that would mess it up.
I just don’t think it adds anything. Reddit and Facebook use it to decide which posts it’s going to show you in which order. Forums like Cracked.com (for instance) use it purely to score ‘internet points’, and you do get posters on there ‘karma whoring’. It’s a problem we don’t have here, and I don’t think we’d gain anything at all if we introduced it.
And it won’t get introduced, even if everyone here thought it was a good idea. So there’s that.
Reach for the pepto.
The regular suggestions of adding ‘Like’ buttons here has me on a regular regimen of Prilosec.
Be strong, Doc.
Not speaking for management, here, but I’d be opposed to it, as well, should anyone in a position of authority ask. We’re a board about discussion, sometimes of the Debate variety and sometimes a bit less take-yourself-too-serious. I think it would actually begin to curtail debate instead of enhance it. Give people an easy response and they’ll use it instead of making their own post.
In response to the ‘+1’ and ‘me, too’ argument, above, I’ll say that we try to discourage such in Great Debates and Elections. It’s not against the rules but too much of it has the potential to disrupt debate and that’s a bad thing. Plus, as with the ‘like’ button proposed, it kills debate.
And just speaking as one of the moderators in GD, I think you’d be able to measure in nanoseconds the time between implementation and the first time the number of ‘likes’ of an argument was used to somehow provide weight to the righteousness of the argument regardless of its actual worth. Call me cynical.
This.
Well said.
Hear, hear!
tl;dr
OK. You’re cynical. 
But so am I.
This.
Posters regularly pop in here asking about features such as like buttons, avatars, inline images, nested quotes, etc.* And the response is always pretty much the same as we see in this thread.
The mods should really just post a sticky that says, “NOPE. There will be no new features implemented on these boards. No matter how compelling your argument is, it just will not happen. Ever.”
If someone misses the sticky and asks for one of these forbidden features, we can just post a link to the sticky. No need to rehash the same arguments every time, with the same outcome.
*FTR: I would be in favor of enabling some of these features. But it ain’t gonna happen.
Paper Tiger beats Rock Lobster.