Dear (generic) people who are worried this will make DW too much like Facebook: it will also make DW more like YouTube, Twitter, Digg and every single Digg-imitating link aggregator, and the AO3. (Possibly Tumblr; I don't know enough about Tumblr.) Surely all those sites can't be evil?

Honestly, though, the idea matgb had upthread is perfect -- if mems get overhauled into some sort of social bookmarking tool, there could easily be a way of displaying the number of (public) bookmarks a post has. (Delicious is probably my favorite place on the internet, so possibly I am a little biased.)