@ Carl, you just made my morning.
@Pny, the system you propose is obviously a better indicator and as you point out, very easy to implement. Problem is, over time, these kinda of things turn out to become a popularity contest. Take a look at Richard, who decided to stop foruming here. He had over 700 posts and maybe a dozen likes. I know he made many times more than a dozen quality posts.
Measuring his contributions (and anyone's) by the number of likes isn't an entirely efficient system. If you look at the forum members with at least some body of work, say over 300 posts, and look at teh number of likes they got, maybe 75% of time most agree it reflected at the least the minimum (but not maximum) quality they provided. Many quality posts go unliked and that is OK. Not everyone should be compelled to hit the like button multible times a day like we are on FB. Over here, you normally get a "Like" if you made an exceptional post or wrote something hilarious.
Given those observations, I can conclude that those who write a lot of exceptional or rediculous funny posts get the likes. I conclude based off of this that experts and drunken monkeys alike will get their huge share of likes.
I guess that makes me an expert at similating drunken monkey behaviour while seated in front of a laptop while logged into TTD.
There is no foolproof 100% way to achieve recognizing quality as it can differ person to person and also day to day among the same people.