To encourage all GLRF members to participate in our forums and content commenting (news, calendars, blog entries), we are adding a content voting feature called Stamp It!. The idea is that people can comment or vote, if you will, on a post in a forum topic, or on any type of content on the GLRF website without offering an explanation.

Want to see it in action? Visit @omac's topic in the GLRF United States forum.

Why the need for this voting feature? We already have a 1 - 5 star rating system in place but that isn't the point. The fact is that the 80/20 rule exists throughout our culture and it certainly exists with online communities. That means 20% of the people make 80% of the comments or posts. For those who enjoy a healthy debate and have a strong skin, they can endure mudslinging and arguments. But for the GLRF members who want to avoid drama but want to interact with the content, this Stamp It! feature allows you to offer an opinion(vote) on a content piece. To ensure that everyone feels safe, you can even cast your vote anonymously.

While we don't have any noticeable online bullying nor would we tolerate it, the fact is that some members won't even venture to make a reply or a comment for fear of retribution. The Stamp It! features offers a way for the the meek, the shy, and the reticent the ability to express their opinion without fear of attack or retribution.

The new feature has been enabled for all the forums and will soon be added to the calendar events, the blogs, and the regional news.

The Stamp It! feature is incredibly versatile, allowing for any number of voting selections that can be tied to one or many forums. This means we could have German votes for the GLRF Germany forum, and French votes for the GLRF France forum, as examples (if you visit the GLRF France forum topics, we have enabled a test Stamp It! example there). The versatility also applies to the other content sections, like blogs, calendars, and regional news. So we could have different vote selections for news than we do for forum posts.

You can change your vote and even decide to go invisible, if you want. After a piece of content has a vote, you will see the summary of types of votes cast by members.

Tell us what voting selections you think would be useful!