I don't think this is necessary. Most of the time, you can directly correlate the number of helpfuls one receives with the amount of time any reviewer spends on the site, but in general, the best reviewers land somewhere in the top 50. It's a barometer of the quality of a reviewers contributions to the site.

Recently the administration removed the "not helpful" button. Actually I have been away on a trip for 10 days and only returned to find the latest innovation. I have no problem with that, but replacing it with "funny" and "agree" is redundant. The idea of something being helpful encompasses a lot, including agreement with an opinion. It just isn't necessary in the broader view of things.

'Agreee/Disagree' would be useful in matters polemic; however, polemics in RIA can already be discerned from readers' comments that complement the ratings. The 'helpful/unhelpful' apply to comments that dispense fresh perspective or else explain the experiences of others: such ratings acknowledge the rare known fact or historical references that follow a rating; merely filing 'agree' or 'disagree' hardly makes discourse any clearer. Opinions with which we disagree often are helpful; by the same token, some with which we agree basically can be obscure and cryptic and thus, well, unhelpful. Asuming that contributors are willing to contribute beyond what amounts to a 'yes'/'no', let's not dispense with the 'helpful/unhelpful', so long as it is used appropriately.

I agree with Kairho, just change it to agree/disagree and maybe add a neutral

Just rename it agree/disagree, which is what most people use it for anyway. My ire is raised when I see some of our most thoughtful posters (of all persuasions) write a cogent and well presented opinion and people mark it as not helpful because they disagree with the point of view. Examples abound in religious and political commentary where someone will find not helpful a treatise on the accuracy of ID because they are staunch evolutionists. AND vice versa. Rename this Agree/Disagree.

I'm new here, but I LIKE this feature. It allows me to know if I'm writing stuff that other people like/enjoy/agree with. If people disagree with me, they can click unhelpful. I'm kinda surprised that RIA doesn't keep track of these as well, since not doing so seems to make that pretty pointless. I like the feature the way it is, don't change a thing!!

Not that! We like this feature, and everyone from the big boys to the trolls use this everyday. Its ego stroking and bashing at its finest!

I don't measure my life achievements based on the number of helpful votes I get. I could care less. Personally I see no use for them, other than to accomodate egocentric pinheads.

This sight should put more of an emphasis on rating weblist items, even for the most mundane or ludicrous list.

Its not that I want to ged rid of this idea..but in my opinion, this is nothing more than an opportunity for folks to agree or disagree with someones thought. I'll go one step further and say that in a lot of cases it is simply someone taking the opportunity to vote negatively for those who he/she have a problem with. We all know this is going on. So many of the lists are not to help at all any way. They are simply entertaining and many times not even that. Im a big sports fan but honestly, what or who are we helping by commenting on a teams uniform?! Nothing and nobody. You might as well just ask....do you agree or disagree with this opinion. It might be more useful and would be more of a gauge on someones outlook. You would at least know if your opinion is a popular one or not. That would be entertaining to me.

I'm a pretty competitive guy, so I appreciate some sort of effort to keep score. As others have mentioned, the Not Helpful button means nothing in the overall scorekeeping, but does provide a way to give feedback on a specific comment - and after all the site is all about feedback. I don't think this feature should go away, but I don't think it should continue to be the ONLY measurement of a user's reputation.

Though the system is misused, I figure that my opinion of a comment is not going to change when I read the numbers next to the helpful/not helpful line, anyway, so it really doesn't matter all that much.

This can go as far as I'm concerned, particularly the not helpful part. I haven't clicked one of those in months, since they don't matter anyway.

Got dat right!

I'm giving this a three mainly because I doubt RIA would be as popular as it is were it not for this quirky, albeit obnoxious, question. But I do think there is some credit to the belief that many care to much about the number of helpfuls they have a little to far.