"Like" button?

There are times when someone posts something particularly funny or insightful where I'd like to indicate my pleasure without a reply or moving to another thread... ever thought about something like that here?

I like the like idea.

I'd imagine a little heart-shaped icon (even better if it could be changed based on the game type.. so you know, call of cthulu could have something more appropriately horror-stricken). It could appear to the left of Quote. To the left of the icon could be "1 Like" or "2,000 Likes" and if you clicked on the # of likes you could either get a pop-up or a revealed row below the icon/quote bar with thumbnails of avatars who liked it).

We had a discussion on gamification where a "like" button was brought up, and accepted only conditionally. A concern was people liking everything, and the thought was that (in context of earning experience) to like a post, you spent a nominal amount of experience that could potentially be transferred to the post author.

I like the idea of a like button in general (and I do aim to have stuff be more thematic based on game, but I'd need the help of a graphic designer or artist for that). I would like to renew to the gamification discussion over all.

I wouldn't attach particular value to a 'like' beyond "someone liked this" -- at least at the start.

The concern as the thread brings up, is "overlinking". We don't want this to be Facebook after all.

I'm a regular at some forums elsewhere where people post a lot. Given the low key nature of the like feature it isn't heavily used or abused. Granted that those forums are super political and wonky in nature so maybe the likability bar is higher. That said I don't think people will just wantonly like everything. :)