Thanks! that was it, I had some custom css that hid the 2nd item in the dropdown menu. That also explains why it worked with the new DB since the custom css was no longer there.
@pichalite because some topics i synchronized from GHOST's blog through nodebb-plugin-blog-comments, and the TAGs were synchronized too, but it would appear that some TAGs' symbol were escaped by the system, just like musician's equip was escaped to musician&X27S equi....
After digging into this is appears that there's actually no language strings for like and dislike, however there's a alternative to the default reputation system, and that is @Nicolas his likes plugin. This will work with the latest version of NodeBB.