I agree with Jer and Bernardo, and I find it a little competitive too. Just like with comments, sometimes people get sad if they don't get "liked" - but it might not be anything to do with the quality of the post, just what breaking news story people are searching for.

agree with jer - this is more than a double-edged sword for GV, could easily become a guillotine good for everybody and everything

I think this idea goes against the spirit of GV in various ways and should be avoided if possible. Our goal is to spread the news about underappreciated voices worldwide, emphasizing posts that people choose to 'like' is the opposite of this. We should be emphasizing posts that people are missing and haven't seen, not the ones that are more popular by designation.

Beyond that fundamental rift, I think a 'like' system would be very biased on GV, and people would 'like' posts they agreed with rather than well written ones. There's also a strong possibility that certain readership communities (ethnic, geographic, political) would use the feature more and create biased listings.