Please discuss. You should see our helpdesk - what is a blue dot and this person is mean to me is just filling it up!
Yup. It's feature to have a laugh with. Sometimes it is worthwhile, sometimes not. People who bitch about it should have it removed.
Better idea: Make Gringo Tex the "Moderator Without Portfolio" and direct all rep complaints to his mailbox. Let's see how being his bitch and taking a 1600 point rep hit suits them.
No rep, no posts-count-anywhere, and certainly no coitus. How will Bigsoccererers then validate their existance?
I was originally opposed to the rep system, then I became ambivalent. I'm still basically ambivalent. But for the sake of discussion ... The Blue Dot Issue - Yes, the blue dot is lame. But why can't you just get rid of it with a software tweak? Rep Cliques - It seems like all previous discussions about "rep abuse" have focused on abolishing positive rep cliques. That was totally wrong-headed. People give out rep to posters they believe improve their experience at BigSoccer. If your experience at BigSoccer is made better via participation in a rep clique, then fine. You shouldn't be harassed for doing that. (And, Huss, you have harassed people in the past for establishing such cliques.) This Person is Mean to Me Issue - This, not rep cliques, is what you should actually consider rep abuse. It's abusive not because somebody is giving you negative rep, but because somebody (or some group of people) is using the reputation system to harass you. This sort of harassment can probably be dealt with by the moderators. If software-wise it's possible, for someone who does abuse the rep system in this manner I'd suggest drastically lowering their reputation, and disabling their ability to give reputation. Those are reasons to reform both the application of the rep system and some attitudes about it. What are some reasons to get rid of it? Server Concerns - It is another thing to load. If it came down to it I suspect most peope would choose improved server performance over keeping the reputation system. Is BigSoccer better for it? - Has it really improved life on BigSoccer.com? My own sense? It really hasn't made much of an impact one way or another. It does not tell you who's a good poster, and who isn't. If it disappeared people would grumble for a week and then forget about it. If it hasn't clearly improved this place, then maybe it should go. Has it undermined discussion? - I actually think it has undermined discussion a little bit. People are less inclined to make a small public comment, favoring instead to comment privately via the reputation system. So it has removed some bit of discussion from the board. "You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to so and so again." - I really hate reading this over, and over, and over, and over again on the boards. It's become quite tedious.
This is a breaker for me. Previously I didn't really care about rep at all and I'd only build rep (not with the concious aim of getting rep) by putting up thoughtful posts. Even though I didn't post for rep I was pretty proud that all my reps were pos reps, especially because they were from all different people for posts that I'd taken time to write. That changed when I (and some other posters) started getting neg reps for disagreeing with certain posters. What makes it worse is that those person(s) are now doing it for harrassment value for posts that nobody in their right mind could regard as trolling/flaming. It's as if they've decided "right, I don't like this person so I'm going to neg rep him as much as I can". The net effect is that they effectively become thought police, neg repping people who happen to post disagreeing views to theirs, while posting their own rubbish at will. It's sad, but it's the internet and there are plenty of people unable to have reasoned arguments without taking things personally. IIRC other people have complained to the mods and they've been told that mods don't regulate the rep system. Again that what I heard, may be wrong may be right, would like to be wrong in fact because I have a few complaints to make in that case With that impression in mind, I've got to say that the current system is almost "Wild West" style (ie. you'd better be able to protect yourself and have a posse able to back you up) and the only way to protect yourself is to have a high rep and be able to neg rep back with similar effect. A rep MAD system if you will .. This in fact encourages rep-whoring. Even people who otherwise wouldn't give two stuffs about rep have to do it, otherwise they end up with -ve rep if they end up on the wrong side of someone who's been whoring. This is the sole reason why I've recently begun to rep-whore. To me it was better when I had ~30 rep from thoughtful posts rather than the 135 I've got from rep whoring (despite harrassment neg reps). A potential solution would be the ability to report abusive rep, similar to the reporting of bad posts. I understand that mods are busy and may not have enough time to deal with each case in a timely fashion. If I understand correctly even the reported posts now seem to be overload. How about encouraging mutual conciliation then? To take a leaf out of the legal system, have a proper process in place but encourage people to sort it out between themselves (ie. settle out of court). A way to automate this would be to automatically send PMs containing the relevant post to both parties and a moderator queue when a post/rep is reported. The option of the reporter to drop the matter after citing a reason would streamline the process. The two parties would ideally discuss and come to a settlement (amicable or othewise) and the reporter would drop the report with a reason given. If that fails to work, a mod would eventually pick up the report from the queue and start investigating and decide a suitable punishment if necessary. For example, docking massive amounts of rep would be a suitable punishment for frivolous neg repping. At first there would be a flood of reports, but after a while the number of incidents should die down and we wouldn't have as many complaints about the rep system. In summary, there's no need to drop the rep system as long as it's used to reward thoughful posts. It's when neg reps are used frivolously that the system breaks down .. Apologies for breaking the "12-word limit" .. I think I may have just exceeded it
Another solution just came to mind How about killing the ability to neg rep? Stops people power-tripping on the ability to act as thought police, reducing the number of people who'd engage in rep-whoring, while stopping all complaints about the rep system .. All reps should be reset to zero to have a clean start in that case ..
But don't you think that if you neg rep it should be for that particular post rather than just because you dislike someone in general? Ignorant people who continue to post crap should be continuously neg repped, but that judgement should be done on the basis of that particular post alone .. What if someone came and neg repped you without reason? Say you had low rep, you couldn't even do anything back to them, which encourages rep-whoring .. Personally I'd prefer to keep the ability to neg rep, so long as there were proper checks and balances.
Helpdesk!! Of course!! Now I know where to go to ask what the blue dot was. I had to search for the terms "reputation" and "blue" to find this thread, which I thought was of no help at all. But now, it's helped me find helpdesk. I guess I'll go ask. Thanks. By the way, most images on the internet, even here on BS, have a hover-over setting. Maybe if you set the hover-over setting for the blue card to tell people what it was, you wouldn't have to get annoyed about people asking this. It's not exactly self-explanatory.