This is an awful idea. All the "likes" mechanisms that exist in modern social interactions are severely harming quality of said interactions.
There are several serious mechanics in play here.
First of all, people tend to post for likes. If you conform to certain opinions and standards, you get "likes", you are positively affirmed. It doesn't mean you're right, it doesn't mean that you are creating any valuable content; all such likes say is that you go with the flow of the crowd. Sure, it doesn't mean that you're wrong or your content is bad either. Quality and likability can correlate but there is no systemic correlation. I could explain it by pushing it ad absurdum: Justin Bieber is not a great musician just because many people like him. This also encourages people to post just for attention. Not to mention that it's not quality posts that gather the most attention.
Popularity must never be equated with quality.
Secondly, in cases of such likes, early bird gets the worm, or at least tends to. Opinion that is stated earlier often gets more support than a higher quality opinion stated later just because more people read the first one and 5% from 1.000 is more than 10% from 200. This effect usually disrupts any evaluative mechanics desired by creators of such systems.
And what I find also quite important, are elitist issues. This place, like many other similar fandoms (yes, this is a fandom), is having issues with elitism. I rarely post these days, but I committed a wall of text in one of such elitist threads. OP started "discussion" by saying that he doesn't understand how
stupid people on the internet cannot understand how great the aesthetic side of civ6 is, and how magnificent all of new solution introduced in this iteration are. It was of course phrased in a way characteristic to political rallies. I'm giving you the gist of it here but I remembered the best part of it: "why don't people like more strategic approach to the game?". Which, as an intelligent reader should realize, is the classic trick of defining something by presenting an opinion as a fact. Politics 101. Pure populism. That rancid post would have a heap of likes.
As could be expected, 3/4 of posts below it, and it went for several pages, were exclamations of shared superiority. "We are the great elite, we are the quality people, and who shares our opinions, can be smart and special with us, better than those who disagree with us".
This is certainly not characteristic for the whole community, and that thread was rather an exception from normal activities of the forum, something sparked by OP's ego-tickler, all the same, such tendencies here exist and are strong. "Like" systems will only make them stronger.
Do we really want to create in-site celebrities? Because that's what all toxic "like" systems accomplish. Quality defends itself. I don't believe accomplished users lacked proper respect they deserve. Reputation points will only divide them into "better" and "worse" groups.
The only argument about such endorsement system that can be effectively defended is the aspect of its neatness. A simple +1 can be seen as more effective and cleaner than "I agree" posts. However, I'd rather put emphasis on human interaction, and simple "+1" is an alienating mechanism. Let's not move towards single-serving human parainteractions, please. This is a purely axiological argument, though. I just don't find chatting threads to be of lesser quality than in-depth analysis somewhere else. I've made many good friends in places like this, and I doubt I would have accomplished it if our interactions were limited to just clicking "+1". But, as I said, this paragraph is purely subjective.
PS. I've just realized that OP's post is worded very similarly to my old psychology book about manipulating 5yos in behavioral approach
).
