New Feature: Message Rating System

I third that. I think the ratings could potentially distract people from the actual discussion. And I have experience of being an unpopular poster on a creationist forum; the more science I posted, the fewer stars I got. I have a feeling that the unpopular things I say here could go the same way, though I think most of the regular posters aren't petty enough to bother.I wonder if the system could be tweaked so that the ratings are used to flag up exemplary posts? So one star could mean "this post is quite good" and 5 stars could mean "this is bloody marvellous and everyone here should take a look." Though I'm a bit hazy, too, on what's meant by quality. Quality to me is RAZD's recent posts about homo erectus but it's also Dr. Adequate's razor-sharp posts which don't always contain a lot of information but are just damn funny.

Hm, Taz and I don't seem to be doing so well.I fear that because I don't often post in science forums here (due to our resident experts handling such matters better) and find myself defending philosophical or metaphysical positions which are not popular, I'm never going to do well with the ratings as they are.As others have suggested, rating a post as exceptional, perhaps on a scale of 1 to 3, appeals to me. As does RAZD's suggestion for a POTM button. I wonder if there's a way of differentiating types of posts? Maybe one is full of enlightening scientific information. Maybe one is very well reasoned. Maybe one is hilarious. These all seem like different categories to me. If we're going to really try to be fair, maybe we could have a separate creationist POTM category? Some of them manage some reason here and there, even if they're ultimately still wrong.(added in edit)
I notice that Nosy and RAZD's ratings are poor too. That's criminal.Edited by LindaLou, : No reason given.

This seems like a good idea Percy.I'm finding that if I'm talking in a thread about theism, the atheists don't rate my posts very highly. But I've picked up lots of 5s in a couple of science threads. I thought it was a nice perk for one post I put detail into, but the other posts are short and nothing special; I don't know who rated them 5s or why.Part of me thinks, I've got a good member rating now, so I'm going to avoid topics where I'm unpopular. No way will I talk about the paranormal anywhere. It shouldn't matter to me at all really but I find it hard to ignore my ratings and those of others. Why on earth are you at 2.1??So yes, limiting ratings to post-of-the-month material sounds very reasonable to me.