The poll was added early on. I made a post shortly after mentioning the rift between #likes and #yes-votes, and at the time it was 4 – not 39. This was the original post:
The two posts in between the OP and poll post were “Support” and “Yes I would like this”.
IMHO those are perfect examples where a Like would have sufficed.
Maybe it’s not because they didn’t know about or want to Like, but they have some sort of Twitter-like compulsion to post small snippets?
“I just woke up #sleepy”
…
“Toast and coffee for breakfast #onadiet”
…
“Great day for my morning walk #exercise”
I don’t think it’s that. Because of some sour experiences in the past, on the outside it seems like the parent company only acknowledges user feedback when an insanely large angry mob of people comes knocking at their door. This isn’t actually the case, but since they don’t reply to topics often (which is perfectly fine), whenever someone sees a feature request they like, “Do the staff even care about this?” can easily come to mind. Both of the people who posted those comments liked the original post, so I feel the posts are a cry out for attention “Look! we care about this feature! It’s not just this one person who cares about it!”. Maybe they don’t think the number at the bottom of the OP (#likes) is significant enough to communicate that?
Sounds like the users never truly adopted the likes.
Was it SitePoint that made an incentive badge for this situation when migrating from vBulletin? For every five likes a user made, they get a badge.
No, SitePoint doesn’t have a “Like Giver” Badge (not that it isn’t a good idea)
But it does have
Nice Post Received 10 likes on a post. This badge can be granted multiple times
Nice Topic Received 10 likes on a topic. This badge can be granted multiple times
Good Post Received 25 likes on a post. This badge can be granted multiple times
Good Topic Received 25 likes on a topic. This badge can be granted multiple times
Great Post Received 50 likes on a post. This badge can be granted multiple times
Great Topic Received 50 likes on a topic. This badge can be granted multiple times
I don’t see this specifically as a Discourse issue - rather was and am still hopeful that the founders and supporting team come up with something better than we collectively to date have produced. It’s an industry-wide problem, or not depending on your point of view - either way, I don’t think I’m alone in my views in this as highlighted by @Trash:
I’m wondering whether qualification needs to take place before a like is allowed. I am not talking about trust levels, maybe a user has to comment in the thread before they can like? Perhaps that’s too simplistic, but fleeting visits coupled to an indiscriminate press of the like button isn’t really helpful.
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[quote=“purldator, post:19, topic:37695”]
Say, if you were to quantify this as a percentage on average “work rate” that satisfies you, with 0% working not at all, at all and 100% would mean you would not have entered this topic with your concerns about Discourse’s likes to begin with. Where does it fall for you right now?[/quote]
On a scale of 1 to 100? 50. Although I’d say closer to 70 if limiting the sample to this forum alone.
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I’ve been researching the community software marketplace now for about 15 months (although previously launched a community in 08 based on Telligent’s Community Server (commercial version). During this time I’ve come across a few Discourse-based forums, although can’t recite their names. Mostly they crop up during my research into NodeBB v Discourse. And generally, they are well behaved. But that doesn’t mean the like mechanism is effective, it means in my view, the community in question is not abusing it.
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As will all these things, it’s the parameters offered into the equation that generates the answers, but notwithstanding that, based on what you and @erlend_sh have said to me here, I will open my mind even further than it was before and rethink this. Watch out, I’m gonna do a smiley > 
Some additional thoughts. After reviewing almost every forum on the marketplace, and trialling a few, (NodeBB twice), I’ve concluded I wouldn’t select or reject any one platform based solely on its brilliant or otherwise handling of sentiment. Which is why I am here today. I like Discourse a lot. On Friday, I wrote a lengthy note of thanks to the founders (and then dumped it before sending) stating how brilliant I think Discourse is. Of course, it doesn’t come without its problems. Notably in my use case, the lack of more than two levels of categories and the inability to offer category moderation. The latter being started on soon I hope.
Overall I think Discourse is great. I don’t happen to agree with everything the team is planning to do in terms of future functionality and hope as a paying customer to influence those decisions in some small way. If I can’t, knowing how reasonable the team behind Discourse appears to be, I’ll happily concede my loss is for the community’s greater good.