This was actually prompted by doing the thumbs up thumbs down thing on this section. On other forums, message boards or blogs where people leave comments, there is sometimes a facility for people to click their approval of individual posts. Each post has a counter that shows how many people have registered their approval.

It's considered poor form to just post 'I agree' a lot, and sometimes you don't have quite enough to say that adds to a thread but still want to show appreciation of particularly good points. When I have seen this facility used it gives an interesting measure of the strength of feeling towards this or that point.

Some people are too shy to post their thoughts but this would give an opportunity for bashful lurkers to register support for arguments.

To be honest, as much as I like the idea, I don't think it'd be in the best interests of keeping harmony on the forum. All that would happen is the system would get abused, people would get upset and there would be more arguments caused.

It's used extensively on youtube in an anonymised format and from what I can see it's saved me a lot of time particularly if, as there have been, I agree with sooooooooo many things which people have said.

how about then just a thing in the area of the signature area where people can press a thanks button. then users will have summat like 'Dave has been thanked 12 times' in Dave's signature area somewhere.

I'm not keen on this. Some of the more 'controversial' posters have a following which may well make their opinions look like popular opinions and representative of the SF as a whole. Much as there are times I'd love to praise or, err, the opposite, posts (as you can do on other forums) I think things on here get so emotional it would be a bad idea...

how about then just a thing in the area of the signature area where people can press a thanks button. then users will have summat like 'Dave has been thanked 12 times' in Dave's signature area somewhere.

I like the thanks idea. It's used on moneysavingexpert and a number of other foums and works quite well.

Plus you can't thank the same post more than once.

It's an idea that works on forums which are informative (CADTutor has this facility) but SF does not have a common goal, has many members with opposing views, and I agree - it's open to abuse

If more people were sane, sensible and reasonable I'd think it was a good idea

And it also looks like there's a load of nutcases on youtube as well.

I thought that's what 'you tube' meant :?

Please don't go off topic.

The original suggestion was a great one and something we've been looking to introduce for a while. We are now awaiting a major software upgrade which may make this more possible. Watch this space - later in 2008.