Is it, though? I assume if you go see someone speak, you applaud when they finish. Maybe you even applaud certain things they say along the way. You don’t line up with ohers to get the microphone for the Q&A afterward just to say “I really liked what you said about Medicare for All”, pass the mic, and then go sit back down. That would waste everyone’s time, just as a “Me Too” post does. Your applause at that point was sufficient. But it wasn’t irrelevant, or a paradox. It’s useful for the speaker and everyone else in attendance to have that quick, simple gauge of people’s sentiment.
If the SDMB has another act, it would be wise to look at forum software that isn’t vBulletin. Discourse is free to deploy/use, has more features, is more modern and, from my experience, is better liked by more admins and users. It has paid memberships, even Patreon integration, and likes (hearts) among other things.
The NaNoWriMo boards are porting to Discourse. It’s fun to play on the test site while it’s being built.
It does, indeed, have likes and badges (you get a badge the first time you like or get liked). While those are both good features for that particular board, I don’t know if they’d be good for this one.
Discourse only costs money if you want the company to host your forum for you. The model is akin to Wordpress. If you have your own server, such as with DigitalOcean, Vultr, Amazon, etc., the price would be about $10/month for the minimum recommended specs.
edit: Also, the likes/hearts feature can easily be turned off in the configuration. It’s available as a basic feature but optional.
edit2: It’s also possible to import posts from vBulletin so you don’t lose content.
To clarify, the $10/month is to the server provider. Theoretically, you could install Discourse to a $35 home server and not pay anything to a server provider either but the SDMB has too much activity for that to be feasible.
I’ve really been impressed with XenForo after switching my board over from vBulletin. It was coded by the same folks who made vBulletin 3. The cost is reasonable ($160), it’s much gentler on my server than vBulletin ever was, and it’s control panel and feature set blows vBulletin 3 and 4 away. It has paid memberships, Google/Facebook/Twitter/etc. integration/registration, and an upvote system.
The switch from vBulletin to XenForo breathed a lot of new life into my forum. A bunch of inactive members returned, active members are posting more, and there’s a slowly increasing amount of visitors and page views. It’ll take some time to know whether the change attracted new members, though.
Interesting idea, but you just KNOW that a cottage industry of vote-explaining essay rentals would spring up within a couple of days.
OTOH, that IS how the free market works, so the fact that it would both generate economic activity AND work out to an effective wash in the long run (wrt voting outcomes) might be an argument in its favor.
I think the metaphor was that the hamsters (the content and members) move to a new habitat (new message board software), thereby gaining any advantages (features) of the new habitat over the old one.
In the metaphor, the hamsters are the power of the servers. They’re running their little hamster wheels, which provide the power of making the board happen.
The habitat remark seems to be suggesting change of board software. I’m not sure that fits the same metaphor, but that’s how I read the intent. Thus, changing the habitat is changing the software, but keeping the hamsters is keeping the same servers.
Server load was an issue that originally drove some of the implementation decisions, but I don’t think it’s been a problem for a while. Though there are some server side glitches with synching clocks and tracking which posts the users have visited.
My latest comment responding to just the past few hours of activity in the Biden thread is a perfect illustration of the thesis in my OP:
Of course, the actual comment takes up a lot more space in the thread than the above, because it also includes the quoted material from each of the comments I endorsed.
Take it from someone who uses “Like” A LOT on Facebook. It is a very shallow form of expression. I’ve “Liked” posts I didn’t even fully read just because the people are friends of mine.
If you want to “Like” my post, tell me you agree and WHY. That has substance, the “Like” button doesn’t.