I find many replies to my questions illuminating and helpful. I’d like to not add to clutter by adding a ‘Thanks’ reply. I up-vote them, but it would be nice to have a ‘Thanks’ button so the writer can see someone has thanked them for an illuminating discussion/answer
One feature I liked of Scoop, the software that runs the old Kuro5hin (and later, DailyKos and other sites), is that it shows you who’s ‘rated’ your comments. I used this as a ‘thanks’ fairly often. In addition to its direct use in discussion threads, imo in the right community it also helps subtly build a sense of community through more pervasive use, since you get a sense of who regularly is reading and appreciating your comments.
Instead of introducing a separate ‘thanks’ feature, maybe just show the poster who upvoted their comments? I’m trying to think of downsides to this, but they seem fairly unlikely.
My gut instinct says this would encourage groupthink by pointing people toward like-minds.
I think if you make it visible to the author only it would slow (enough to prevent?) groupthink permeating throughout.
Yeah, I agree with all of this - I would call the potential problem something like “cliquishness” rather than group think, but in any event making the list of up-voters only visible to each comment’s author addresses both.
As an important caveat, I would certainly not make the list of down-voters visible. That just creates bad feelings all around. I think there was a thread here about it sometime last year. :)
Score 5: Insightful