At the suggestion of several people I have "spoken" to today, I have decided to post my feedback on what I liked about the new (now gone) social features of this forum.
1. Activity monitoring and leveling are useful information to get a "snapshot" of how involved and/or experienced a poster is. Having that information available to me at a glance let me get to newbie questions more quickly and answer them. I also was able to move on from certain threads if I saw the question was being answered by one of the experienced people already. Yes, this info can be ferreted out still by inference, but it is not available "at a glance" any longer.
2. Getting a level up award encourages active participation. Some of us like to feel we are making progress, even if it is only "virtual" progress. Leveling up gives the welcome illusion of traveling a road and getting further to a destination....
3. I received more interaction and friend requests once there was incentive for people to reach out. This allowed me to have some great conversations with people and to realize that they appreciated me.
4. There vibe of the forum was more social. Bankruptcy is a serious topic. But having some fun while answering questions certainly isn't going to keep anyone from getting their urgent needs addressed. Micro, niche, facebook type sites are the wave of the future, and I liked being able to interact in a more graphical, more multi dimensional way than is currently available now that the forum has been rolled back.
Of course all of these points could be counter-pointed. But this is a feedback thread, so I am simply giving my feedback.


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