The kudos system at deep sinking did have big problems.
But...!
There was one good advantage of the kudos system. It meant that writers and artists could see whether "lurkers" liked what they had contributed. A great story or image might have only 6 or 10 or 12 people reply in the thread to say how great it is, but if it has 150 kudos, then you know that at least 30 people really liked it. (And if some people gave 3 or 4 kudos rather than 5, then perhaps around 40 or 50 people liked it.)
It's especially useful is someone does something that is a bit of a "niche" work that not everyone likes - the person might only get 2 positive replies in the thread, but if they also ended up with a total of 40 kudos then they know there were several others that liked it too and simply didn't comment.
I think the big problem with Deep Sinking's kudos system was the fact you could only give out 5 kudos in one day. Many people considered kudos to be like a star rating system (5 stars, 4 stars etc), and when someone really liked a work they were likely to give a full 5 kudos. Yet quite often there were two, three or even four really high quality works released in a similar timeframe, and so people couldn't give kudos to those, and left messages like "You'll be getting 5 kudos when they recharge" and that kind of thing.
If something is worth 4 or 5 stars it is worth 4 or 5 stars, regardless of the quality of other things up on the forum at the same time. You don't see film critics giving a film 2 out of 5 rather than 4 out of 5 because there's another good film out at the same time! Heh.
Anyway, I don't mind the lack of kudos. I'm just saying I understand where Billie Bonce is coming from - the kudos system meant he knew he had lots and lots of fans, other than the ten people or so that bothered to actually post a comment in a thread.