At the bottom of each post on Toolmonger, you’ll find this button:

What is it?

By clicking this button, you can let us know that the post in question caught your interest.  Clicking the button doesn’t show your approval of the tool in question or even your agreement with the sentiments contained within — it simply lets us know that the post was significant to you in some way.

But why bother?

Well, we use this information in a couple of ways.  First, we review it every so often to see what topics we should put more effort into and which topics Toolmongers as a whole aren’t really interested in.  We also use it to assist in selecting the “top 5” tools each week for our Week in Tools roundup.  And, we use it to determine which posts we should discuss in the Toolmonger podcast.

Can’t I just click it 10,000 times?  Is this a real contest/voting system?

Yes.  No.  Please don’t.  We’re not looking to become the next Digg here, so we haven’t invested in trying to prevent gaming of the system or other such abuses.  We’ll simply ask you to use the system as it’s intended, clicking the button only once when you’re interested in a post.  We’ll go over the results and use our own common sense when interpreting them.

We hope this information helps, and we also hope that you’ll take the time to click the button!