Another perspective on all the POD's. If one person makes a very articulate post and many don't feel the need to add and they agree, they are giving consensus to that opinion. Whereas if there is only that one well articulated post and even though there might be 20 others who agree, it would appear that this is the only person who feels this way/has this opinion. I view the POD posts as "votes" for a certain viewpoint if that makes sense. And if there is another, differing viewpoint, and that post gets alot of POD's, it would appear that there is more support for the differing one.
When making threads asking advice here, I do take in to consideration how many people chime in on a given perspective.
I agree that short agreement posts can be helpful to a certain extent - I too take them as a gauge for the general forum opinion - but I have seen some threads where there might be a couple of pages that are littered with "I agree" and "pod" and only a few actual opinions. There's a line between getting useful, although negative, feedback and being made to feel stupid because
everyone disagrees with you and you have 30 responses to prove it.
I guess just imagine if this were occurring in person. If I said something that most people disagreed with, I wouldn't want everyone in the room telling me that they disagreed. Maybe just a few insightful comments; I would take the lack of positive comments to mean that everyone else disagreed.
Tru 'dat. I often wish we had a 'like' or thumbs-up button to show support for a post even when I have nothing remarkable to add to the discussion.
Facebook has spoiled me. I often find myself wanting a like button the forum. I personally don't like just writing writing "I agree" unless it's very early on in a thread but I would click a little thumbs up button.
