As there is no "jump to first unread post" feature I use the Activity Feed to check up on our forums between visits.. But there is an annoying feature that bumps very old posts to the top if someone "likes" it. 

Can this be disabled without disabling the entire "like" feature of the website???

Unfortunately not. It counts the like as new activity on that post- which it is, so it puts it at the top of the feed.

I addressed this a year ago.

http://community.iclanweb ... ions-hsp/getpage/1#1

Long story short: Ban your members or disable the like feature if you don't want spam, otherwise you'll have to enforce stupid rules and anger your members over trivial functionality - you know, because members like being told they'll be banned or "disciplined" for using the like function too much when it's there to be used.

I just read that thread. It's similar problem but definitely not the same cause. Our members are legitimately "liking" posts they find helpful to give each other credit. The problem is the lack of control over how this effects the activity feed. To me, it seems a little ridiculous that I can't stop a "like" from bumping an old thread up on the activity feed. Banning members is just an answer in our case. Turning off the feature is stupid also but if members decide that is the best.. It's just another reason I regret paying for a year of service with iClanwebsite.

...

How it affected the feed is why I turned it off. Legitimate liking or not, it was helping to bring up old or useless posts to the top, thus drowning out new activity, which is bad.

One thing you will have to keep in mind when reading my posts  is the "ideals"  iClans puts forth now which is the rhetorical and function-limiting "Don't follow our rules; don't belong here" mentality they'd like us to have about our sites Vs. a(my) more progressive approach which is "Please give us the functionality to accommodate our members to allow our communities to grow"; one approach is bound to be more old-fashioned and stubborn,  and the other is only bound by the limits of the imagination.

I feel like having it the way it is now vs. not pushing posts to the top should be based on two criteria admins could use to figure which one is best for them:

Community size, and quality/quantity of an average post.  Although the criteria is subjective to one's opinion, these would be great guidelines to follow if there was the option to toggle like-pushing on/off. 

 I feel like these would be key factors to not only choose what's best for the site at the moment, but could be changed later in the future - for better or for worse - to help target meaningful posts or to deter bad ones from coming to the top, allowing a site to progress socially without superficial or inarticulate posts, or what have you, continually makes its' way to the top.

Here are some ideal examples and reasoning:

Little community / below average quality posts - No Push
No push by default, and most likely not want to use the like feature at all, as it would serve little to no purpose. Low activity, average post content not relevant, meaningful or inspiring. Maybe the game your community plays is on its' last leg, so people aren't as enthusiastic or interested as they once were(That's my community!)

Little community / average to above average quality posts - No Push
Everyone seems involved and the average post is meaningful, so why make it a popularity contest by trying to keep one person's post above everyone else's? It may not be talked about, but it could be seen as favoritism or biased, which could assist in creating a negative atmosphere. 

Big community / below average quality posts - Push
There aren't many posters that grab your attention, but there are enough posters who are uplifting, and enough users to take notice of that. Accentuate the good posts by allowing users to like and push the good posts to the top.

Big community / average to above average quality posts - ?
This could swing either way. It's possible that having the push 'on'  would lend itself to making people realize there are other methods to communicate thoughts and ideas without having the activity feed as the only means, when users see posts that everyone likes - which could be seen as annoying, yet manageable because of the other avenues of communicating - and yet be tolerable and still leave users undeterred because of the good quality of the popular posts. In others words, a community rich of content could only benefit from it, creating equilibrium across the whole site because users would be more willing to respect social standards put in place  to be a part of the community  and to be heard in a manner that's more proper.

And I suppose the flipside to this is everyone goes batshit crazy with the like button and abuses it...but then one would have to wonder how it  got that way in the first place, and with an option to on/off  a like-push would just be one of many potential things put into place to direct our communities towards a better experience...oh, in my opinion.