Your suggestions please

[Clinton]

How can we increase members' use of the Thank You button and the Reputation "star"?

I know not everyone thinks these are a good idea, and that some thanking goes on to "reward friends", but it certainly has worked in other forums to encourage people to make posts worthy of getting thanks and reps... and more quality posts are always a good thing.

(FAQ on both the reward systems are in this thread)

Thanks in advance for your suggestions (even if I don't hit the Thank You button for every one! )

[hooperman]

Maybe it's just an awareness thing. Maybe giving prizes out to people who have been thanked the most would get members to think more about the "thanking" thing in general - giving thanks as well as making high quality posts to get thanks?

Alternatively, a simple solution might be to make the thanks button bright green.

[Melissa]

I must admit that because I don't visit that often I forget about the buttons and just say thanks in my reply instead. I like the idea of prizes. Would that work with this audience?

[tke71709]

No one knows what the star is for :P

I think most of the people on here will post good content regardless of whether they get a thank you or not.

[No Remorse]

I think the quality and meaning of the thanks ratings will vary from site to site. As I've previously expressed, and by the nature of this site's name, I think we're all generally from a more professional class and have a genuine desire to help better one another. I've seen other forums where the reputation was out of control because you'd get thanked just for agreeing with someone. Also the guy who was out of work and posting 30 times per day seemed to have the most credibility because he had nothing better to do :-)

Idea:
You could limit the ability to leave a 'thanks' to x number of times per month. Say for example you set each profile to 5 'thanks' per month. Maybe people would hang on to them longer and use them in meaningful situations.

Next will come 'rollover thanks' - where our unused 'thanks' rollover to the next month free of charge

[tke71709]

Also the guy who was out of work and posting 30 times per day seemed to have the most credibility because he had nothing better to do :-)

Hey now, no need to make things personal. I doubt anyone thinks of me as being credible around here.

[No Remorse]

Hey now, no need to make things personal. I doubt anyone thinks of me as being credible around here.

Oops, sorry to hear about that. Then lets bump it up to 100+ posts per day.

I'm probably like a lot of people - I thank the person inside of the thread most of the time. I know you're trying to figure out a way to get people like me to click on the actual Thanks button that literally tracks the poster's recognition value. I guess I can learn to stop saying thanks and just click it instead.

[Clinton]

I know you're trying to figure out a way to get people like me to click on the actual Thanks button

Exactly. In your case what would cause you to change the natural response of typing up a thank you when replying to a post and hitting the Thank You button instead?

[christopheravell]

I think a contest might have people holding on to their thanks because when you thank someone else, you are further down in the contest. I think changing it to a "Like" button, ala Facebook, would get more natural response. People do not naturally know what "thanks" is, but they do know what "Like" is -- again thank you Facebook.

Just change the word to "Like" and make the thumb blue. Even replace the icon with the FB icon if you need to.

As far as the reputation star goes... Not sure, it still seems redundant to thanks -- or should I say "Like".

One other thing might be to move the "Like" button to the bottom of the post instead of in the bar.

See mine :-)

btn_facebook-like-icon.gif

[hooperman]

LOL - love the green thanks button!

Can you make it pulsate?