To start with, I like the implementation of the rating system. It's a step forward which is going to satisfy a lot of minds out there - including my own.

However, what I would like, is the option to rate not only on a topic level, but also the option to vote on individual posts in a topic. Then, the rating hearts shown on the forum page next to the topics in question, would be an average of the total of ratings given to the posts in that particular thread.

This opens up - what I know I would find useful - the possibility to take a look at a person's profile and see this individual's average rating - which wouldn't just be based on how good people think his/her's starting post is.

There's plenty of ups and downs with being able to rate each and every post, I suppose, but I think more people than I would find it useful. Would feel more flexible this way, if this option was given.

Can we get ratings on a sentence level too?

Well, here's the question that needs to be answered: How do users find posts that have been rated up? With the topic rating, you know what the rating is both in the topic itself and a step above in the forum view. With post ratings, you cannot show this information above the topic view, since you have muliple post ratings per topic.

I understand the desire to add post ratings, as people requested this a lot when I added topic ratings on Neowin, but the problem is making them visible enough to be useful. There isn't really a clear way to display them such that you can find highly rated posts easily or avoid low rated posts.

Well, how about put a system like the Thanks system thanking the person per post ?