[hider=I can format my arguments as a list, too!]
[quote] - Without the rating system, would two people have posted? No. 
- Did the rating system prevent two amazing posts from being written? No.[/quote] - Did one of the two people post [i]right above[/i] Captain Jordan? Yes.
 - Do we still not have the faintest idea what is going on in the other's head? Yes. 
[quote] - Did @TheMaster99 sheepishly like it? Yes.[/quote] - Is that the very person who posted just above Captain, and as far as I know, might not be opposed to ratings to begin with? Yes.
[quote] - Did it lower the barrier to feedback and enhance @Captain Jordan's post? Yes.
 - Is it kinda funny/fun? Yes.[/quote] ...I personally don't find it funny - rather in the "lazy" category. On forums with stricter spam-policies, posting possibly aggravating one-word posts that don't contribute to the thread in any meaningful manner may get you a strike for spam. I am really not sure what the intended message of a single-word post that can signify anything from tiredness to implied moral superiority atop of a halted-until-Mahz-replied (read: finished for the time being) conversation is... It is less amusing and more "not sure if meant to mock or not".
[quote] - Did some people think that revealing user post-count and join-date would lead to peen-measuring contests? Yes.
 - Did it lead to peen-measuring contests? No.
 - Does anyone care about post count? No.
 - Does anyone care about join date? No.[/quote] - Have I seen multiple people going "I have been here for longer/have roleplayed more" as a serous argument and/or justification on RPG before? Yes...
[quote] - Will anyone care about aggregate ratings? No.[/quote] - Do people care about such things in many other places? Yes. 
 - Did most of us want ratings stats on our profiles? No.
 - Did any of the points really cover why we [i]need[/i] those things on our [i]profiles[/i], rather than just have independent counts under the posts? No. 
 - Will having a total likes/laughs/thanks count on profiles ever enhance any posts? No. 
 - Is having a total likes/laughs/thanks count on profiles fun for anyone but people who are like-hoarders? More to the "no" side.
 - Is seeing a person's total rating counts useful to me unless I want to peen-measure? No.
 - Does it look massive on our profiles and can be considered ugly? Yes. 
 - Could hiding the things prevent other people from measuring their peens against mine?  Yes.
[/hider] - Hidered, since, well, it is mostly pointless.

Again, [u][i]I personally don't really care about the ratings that are at the bottoms of posts[/i][/u] (although the pop-in of the buttons is mildly annoying - make those permanently visible? - and as someone pointed out, I agree the likes and whatnot would look better on the same line as the reply button, possibly just as a number next to the perma-visible buttons so they'd not break the layout of posts as much). 
I only want the massive pointless social media gimmick on my [i][b]profile[/b][/i] to go away, and consider implementing it a wrong move. I don't know whether it was lost in translation, but most of my personal disapproval stemmed solely  from the fact the ratings system comes with the on-profile count-thingy (which I need gone). 
The social laziness is just a minor additional thing that also tends to unfortunately come with it. (Well, and in my experience, people tend to upvote questionable and/or pointless things over posts that are actually good or informative. Also, does upvoting harassment count as harassment?)

Also, there is very, very rarely a good justification for [i]not[/i] making something that is a gimmick at best [i]optional.[/i] Let people who want it or plain don't care keep it on their profiles, and people who absolutely don't want it hide it. What's the issue with that?
 - We already have invisibility. I personally see little advantage to it, but I am hardly saying that it should not be available for users if they want it. Why would putting in a "Hide rating statistics" button be any different?

[quote]What about a cloned PM feature that would create Etherpads instead of PMs? It would be a much simpler creation interface (simply a textbox with space to add comma-delimited usernames and a button), but the options would have to be expanded to allow new users to be invited later. 

I see it working like invite-only Google Docs:
I send an Etherpad (new, fancier name should be invented) invitation to [@Mahz] and [@TheMaster99]. 
Now Mahz, TheMaster99 and I can write and edit my Etherpad. 
Mahz suggests that [@LegendBegins] be invited. 
Only I can invite LegendBegins, and I decide to do that.
Now Mahz, TheMaster99, LegendBegins and I can edit my Etherpad.
LegendBegins thinks [@Hank] should join us.
I don't invite Hank to the Etherpad. No one else can, either. 
Only Mahz, TheMaster99, LegendBegins and I can edit my Etherpad.
When we are done with the Etherpad, I click the Close/Lock* button.
Now no one can edit the Etherpad, including me.
The contents of the Etherpad are still available to myself, Mahz, TheMaster99 and LegendBegins.

*Now, I haven't dived too much into Etherpad. Is there a way to disable it from further edits? If so, I'd suggest a Close/Lock button that the creator can use when the Etherpad is finished. The other way to do this might be to extract the Etherpad text and chatlog, create a PM with the contents of both and the users on the Etherpad, and destroy the Etherpad instance.[/quote] I'd think I am in support of this format. What I see as Etherpad doing is, well, basically exactly just taking over the role of Titanpad/Piratepad/Google Doc for collaborations - instead for going off-site for that, you can now just go to the hypothetical "Collabs" tab next to PMs and access any of my collabs and/or create a new collab.

As a sidenote, isn't PMs sending alerts a bit superfluous? I noticed that whenever someone PMs me, I get both a PM notification [i]and[/i] an alert. It would be cleaner if PMs just gave the PM-notify and left alerts alone; right now I appear to need to separately go to the alert tab to make the alert go away, too. 

[quote]What if, for example, when a dice was rolled, it put the result into its own post, almost as if the dice roller was a user. Though, it should be smaller than a full post, taking up a line or so, and with every roll made by a user at once into a hider.[/quote] That is essentially ow chats do it... Let the dicebot be a special user that only has username, so rolls would look like posts with dates, only username in the user field, and the rolls as content. And no one would be able to tamper with the rolls since those are essentially another user's post.

So yeah. 
RPGdicebot | Shienvien rolled 2d6: 4, 3