A horse of course
Guest
X to doubt. People who are supposedly making outrageous posts to farm ratings would not carry on for years without them. Ratings here are just a bunch of emojis, they're not like "likes" on social media, they don't give boosts to visibility, hide low rated posts or flag posts in any way. There's already little encouragement as it is.
I think it's more about the negative ratings.
People get butthurt about having a dozen retard ratings in a game thread. If somebody is being dumb, use words.
That's where interesting discussions pop up.
People did use words, they would make short poasts like "retard detected". I don't like getting spammed with "retarded" or "edgy" ratings either, but it wouldn't make much difference if they were removed imo. I have suggested before that the button parade be purged of obvious "you are correct" and "you are wrong" ratings, but at that point you're in the "disabling things to protect users from themselves" territory.