Yup. It’s a form of courtesy.
Speaking of which…I’m out of here for a while, because yes, I’m out of likes. This would have been a great time to catch up on both old and new threads, but I don’t like reading with my hands tied behind my back (metaphorically speaking).
Me, too.
Yes, but more will arrive tomorrow!
Intermittent reinforcement affects the way we think about rewards. Think about slot machines. Slot machines are programmed to keep a small percentage (usually 5-25%) of the money and pay out the rest in “random” winnings and jackpots. If the payout was predictable, for example, if on every play the gambler entered one dollar and got back exactly 90 cents, the odds would be the same but the gambler would quickly get bored and annoyed. What keeps them feeding the machine is the frequent small payouts (2-10 times the bet), the occasional medium sized payouts (50-100 times the bet) and the dream of the rare payout (over 1000 times the bet). Most people will feed small and medium-sized winnings straight back into the machine and keep playing until they get bored or go broke. That’s how intermittent reinforcement works. Slot machines account for approximately 70% of casino earnings.
http://headrush.typepad.com/creating_passionate_users/2006/03/clicker_trained.html
(to be clear this is a bit of a joke; the real reason is, likes should be somewhat selective – e.g. if someone likes 50% of everything they read, that’s not helping the community filter out the “best” content very effectively. And something that is unlimited is not selective by definition. So there has to be a limit, somewhere.)
… and that’s a terrible injustice if I ever heard one. Those two are wonderful contributors to BB and make it a far better place. That they don’t have Regular status because they don’t read enough topics is a travesty.
Oh, wow! I was just digging back through my history trying to figure out what’s the next step past “Good Post.” I discovered that of the hundreds of things I have posted in the last year, the highest rated was a throwaway fart joke!
I will never understand what qualifies for attention on the internet…
Exactly. That’s a great example of why the golden like is such a good idea.
I am again going to point out that the people who don’t seem to be using the system the way it was designed, and therefore are coming up against weird glass ceilings (like not scanning enough threads to be a Regular, despite being a bulwark of excellent posts on a daily basis, or consistently running out of likes, and not from giving them willy-nilly to 50% of all read posts) are overwhelmingly women. Does BB value our contributions here?
I am wondering how the gender breakdown of members is on this site vs. other Discourse sites - and also, every Discourse staff member I’ve seen comment here seems to be male.
I think you should make a poll. 
0 voters
Didn’t someone already?
https://bbs.boingboing.net/t/poll-female-to-male-balance-in-the-lounge/44040No, I meant make a poll on how often self identified male users run out of likes compared to self identified female users.
EDIT: Whoops, just realized I meant to/thought I had replied to @chgoliz with my poll comment instead of you @daneel, sorry!
It has improved quite a bit since then.
Well I sure do… I may not contribute to some threads cause well don’t need to mansplain and actually you and @Mindysan33, @milliefink and others do a much better job than me.
I like liking posts that have nine likes - that way the poster gets a badge.
That stinks.
What’s the secret handshake or password to read this topic?
