I think the wheel is the closest to perfection I've seen. It gives you the slightest bit of ego stroking feedback you crave (even if you're against it on principle), -then stops. You get 8 votes of approval, and once there, you just have to be content that at least a few people out there found what you have to say valuable (or more likely agreeable, given how we humans tend to operate) and it's now time to let it go. No being the first to race into a serious discussion with a clever pun or meme to reap as many upvofes as humanly possible. I don't mind humor as an honest spontaneous response, but when it gets in the way of discussion as often and severely as it does on Reddit it gets really tiresome.
The wheel was thenewgreen's idea. I loved it immediately, but I can't take credit for it. At the time, posts and comments had between 1 and 5 +'s, if I remember correctly. The idea was similar, that the score was only a rough indicator of approval, and there was an upper limit. But tng was the one that said: "Why not just use the wheel instead?" Then we had the wheel, but still a plus sign to click on. Finally, I think it was alpha0 that suggested that we just click on the wheel itself. EDIT: Here's a image of Hubski before the wheel:
On my tombstone: "Came up with the idea to use the hubwheel as a voting mechanism and died at sea saving his family from Somali pirates"
btw, I didn't see the image the first time I read your comment. FANTASTIC!! It's like seeing a baby photo. Hubski sure has come a long way, good times pal!!
I like the wheel too, but as someone viewing posts that already have a full wheel there's little reason to click on the wheel. Does it do anything?
If you click the wheel on a link, it will push that link out to all your followers, along with links you post yourself. If you click it on a comment, it just adds a 'spoke' to the wheel until it fills up...after that it doesn't really do anything (again, just on comments, not links), which is a very good thing IMO :)