I agree with you, and would use it too, if available.
The number of likes shows the popularity of a certain topic. And exactly for this reason, it must be easily accessed.
It doesn’t necessarily need to say whether the topic is right or wrong, but rather that a lot of people liked it… and therefore it should be more easily found by other members, especially on forums with tens of thousands of topics (where it’s very easy to get lost).
I tried to do this partially… If you want to see the most liked posts, just click on the “Most Liked” link, which I placed in the top menu, with the path: top?order=likes
One problem is that when users sort by another type, such as Replies or Views, the “Likes” column disappears. 
Also disappears when I choose a category (so seeing most liked topics of a category is not an easy task)
