I really like the “like” thing for first posts, and I’m impressed that you took the time to check and see how much it was used.
To me, right now, when I “like” the first posts, it means “I’m glad this got posted, but don’t have anything really useful to add to a conversation.” It would be great if it could be used as a metric to gauge which articles users prefer (I’m assuming that that would be useful to the editors), but @funruly, you’re exactly right; it would definitely need a PSA post by a mod, saying that people should start using the “like” button for that, or even, like you said, autotext at the end of the initial post.
