gday crew :D
interesting about the likes situation. On another forum there is a karma system (someone brought this up). and basically its got no meaning apart from the fact that someone either gives a positive karma or a negative karma. it raises or falls depending on what the poster has done, said, been a help, caused trouble etc.
one thing that restricts the people from banging on a heap of positive or negative karma points is that you can only give one karma point per person per day (possibly even one karma point per day, where you can only give one, and if you wanted to put more points on them or someone else you cant).
as for the fact there is beginners on site that may not be able to contribute to advice, discussions or even a well written article, I dont beleive that you cant add to the site. from what I have noticed on forums in general, a lot of the time the same questions can come up. as we all started somewhere, when I first got into bonsai, I was constantly asking questions and the more advanced were answering these questions. eventually there was new people to the forum and sometimes the same questions would come up and I found myself answering these questions that I asked not that long ago and this helped out the more advanced from having to deal with similar beginner questions.
I dont think being a beginner is a problem as you can always come into a discussion to learn something and contribute, in doing so you would be adding to this which in turn would also mean you would receive points. eventually the beginners become the ones to answer those return questions and it makes it so the more advanced arent continually answering the same questions, which can get rather tedious. honestly if I had a dollar for every beginner that started bonsai that asked the same questions that have come up, gawd I would be rich! ;)
I honestly think this will be a system that will work well aslong as everyone gets behind it. like I said there will be some set backs but we can work around these without to much issue.
I also beleive that it could spur a lot more movement in the site.
as for another idea, what about having a poster of the week or month were they can recieve bonus points for trying to get involved and get in on discussions etc. ? on the bonsai forums a while ago we had a virtual competition held once a month, this involved one of the nursery owners would put up a picture of a stock tree or a tree that had grown out of shape, and then the idea was that members of the forum would use a picture editor and virtualise what they think could be done to the tree. and the nursery owner who was running this comp had a small "prize cupboard" which had some bonsai related things (pots, tools, books etc) which the winner of the virtual comp got to choose from after the entries were judged by a small panel.
I dont know what sort of comp could be done here, or if even a LFS would consider donating the prizes (by the way the prizes although nice werent worth a fortune, had a limit of around $10-$20 prizes).
sorry for the epic! I get going and cant stop sometimes :D