Humor will not be tolerated!! -Portia

Okay, so I answer questions on Yahoo Answers a lot, and you can thumbs up or thumbs down other people's answers. And sometimes when I'm reading the board answers make me so happy that I start looking for the thumbs up button, but then I remember there isn't one. Anyway, I just wanted to say that there were a lot of really interesting questions today with a lot of great answers, and I kept trying to click on the thumbs up! It was a pretty good thing to wake up to.

Hey, thanks for the positive feedback! I'm sure the writers who contributed more heavily to today's posts especially appreciate it.

I do the same thing... I don't write for yahoo answers too often, but I read it, answer bag, and chacha.. In all three places I can say +1 when I like a comment, and I try to do it on the boards too

We've actually talked about implemeting a "thumbs-up" type of functionality in the new Board system we're currently building. Do you think it would make more sense to have the thumbs-up on a question-level or an answer-level? If it's a question-level thing, we can display a "recent favorite questions" list; it doesn't make much sense to display "recent favorite answers" without their questions, and often answers are interrelated enough that pulling out just the favorite answers wouldn't make sense.

So I guess I'm leaning toward a question-level thumbs-up system, but what are your thoughts?

I agree with you Yellow that having answers without questions wouldn't make sense. If it were a question of one or the other, then I'd say rate the answers.

Or something that could maybe be considered is having both be rated, the questions and the answers. You then could rate the question and show the favorite questions, and for the favorite answers, you'd see the question and the answer, with maybe a feature to show other answers as well, if so desired.

But a question-level thumbs-up system sounds good too.

I would prefer it if the thumbs-up button was at the bottom of the post, too. I'm always too lazy/forgetful to scroll up and mark something I liked as a favorite.

and the corresponding thumbs down for when people show conservative political bias will surely be available, correct?

In Yahoo! Answers they give you the opportunity to mark the question as interesting, if you think so. Your name is attached to that marking. The answers are given a thumbs up or thumbs down to indicate how well you think they did answering the question. That makes sense, to me. So, you could have a section for "most interesting" questions, and a separate section for "best rated (or worst rated)" answers. In the section for the answers you would need to give the question as well as the answer, or at least link to the question.

On Answer bag, there is both. You can thumbs up the question, or just say that an individual question went the extra mile. I already use the "favorite" button for good/interesting questions, so the option to thumbs up an answer in specific would provide feedback for the writers... I think it would work best if recently liked answers would pull up the entire post with the liked answer highlighted

In Yahoo!Answers they keep track of who voted a thumbs up or down, so you can't vote more than once on a particular question. No stuffing the ballot box, so to speak. Of course, if you have multiple accounts, and you take the time to log in multiple times, you could still vote many times.

I think it would provide some interesting feedback to the writers. Perhaps more than this discussion forum. I wonder if we would see more competition to provide audience pleasing answers. It could change the Hundred Hour Board in unforseen ways.