The kudos aren't for us, any pleasure or benefit we receive is just a bonus to "enhance our user experience"
The kudos are a marketing tool. They highlight what people like, their opinions, if they're happy/sad about something, particularly something related to the host of the platform (in this case eBay).
It's just another way to mine for data so that marketing choices and decisions can be made. Things like product management, advertising, site health etc
maybe not so much on cs, but on the trading boards they could be viewed as a foirm of "encouragement" as eBay strive to use the discussion boards to steeer people with questions or wanting help etc away from customer support and the time expensive consumption of that service.They want boardies to answer questions and help people cos eBay don't have to pay boardies, but they do have to pay their staff to answer the billions of easilly accessible questions asked a day... all the info is supplied, yet so many people just don't read..
Some people can go their whole lives and never really live for a single minute.
