One woman's "lazy posters" are another woman's potential active lurkers, and a like button is a fairly non stenuous activitiy that can help switch people from passive to active lurking.
Active lurkers are an asset cos they don't just consume and give nothing back.
In one way or another they contribite off site to raising the profile of the site (word of mouth, twitter, blog) and help keep the flow of new blood and increased membership (and thus better revenues) moving at a decent rate.
At least I think that is the way it works, if I understood it right.
Non active lurkers can be encouraged into becoming fully active through babysteps like a "like button", so there is a better chance of them at some point generating content.
I'm not a fan of like buttons, but I am a fan of mumsnet doing what they need to do to stay at the top of the game so they don't disappear into the ether in the future. Becuase it is in myown interests for them to have the kind of sucess that means they don't flog this place off to a corperate outift as soon as it looks like a decline has set in, due to not keeping up with all the functionality other sites can offer.
A corperate merger of mn and nm under the managment of whoever it was that ruined ivillage is not my idea of a result.
I Don't see how a trial run is the end of the world as we know it, I'll likely opt out, my eyes don't like things distracting from the words and internal board politics (royalty stuuf) is not my cup of tea.
This site stands out IMO in the sense that Da Management has a informal, non punative, open forum dialogue with its users and really does seem to take on board what they have to say. So if any site can be trusted with a trial run of a seemingly unpopular function, that can be user disabled, I think this one is has proven that it can be trusted not to wreck their own site and hack off all their users by doggedly sticking to something that proved negative on many levels when they put it through its paces.
Beside, Justine did this How can you resist ?
I still think there should be a limit of (anon) likes per registered account per week/month though.