Just an off-the wall idea that occurred during a 'feedback to project' discussion at SETI.

How easy would it be to maintain a count of how many times a message board post was referred to as a hyperlink target in another message?

In other words, if enough people posted "Read this message", then 'this message' would rise to the top of the rankings as the most useful post - a bit like a simple version of the Google page rankings.

Then, with a suitable decay factor, there could be page displays for 'Most useful tip' in Q&A, 'Current problem workrounds' in Number Crunching, 'Funniest Joke' in the Cafe, etc. etc. [I'm interested in #2 in that list, but hey, let's be inclusive].

I've no idea how easy it would be to implement this - just thought I'd throw it open for discussion.