So I've recently been spending a lot of time in the forums and have been using "marked as favorite" to lend some solidarity to comments that I felt particularly drawn to/appreciative of.
I've been using it as a thumbs up feature... in part because I didn't realize it was effectively a bookmark.
Even after I realized it was a bookmark I continued to use it as a thumbs up because I still wanted to show solidarity.
Occasionally, someone posts something that I disagree with so vehemently I'm compelled to respond. Other times, I wish there were a way to simply 'thumbs down' because "that post is just stupid".
Ideally, I'd love to see a mechanism where I could thumb up, or thumb down a particular post (separate from marking something as favorite) but also I'd love for there to be a list of the names of the people I have thumbs upped (and a counter for how many times) and a list of the names of the people i have thumbs downed (and a counter for how many times).
There are a lot of people on the forums that I have a lot of respect for and any time I thumbs up them (because my opinions are in line with their post) i feel good about myself because in some ways it validates that my own opinions are good.