It took me a while, but I finally figured out the reputation thing. I have a negative. I know the post I got it from, but I don't know why, and it's really bugging me! If I did something someone didn't dig, how will know? I think in order to mark a reputation on a user, you MUST leave a reason. No names, but at least a reason! I have one neg, how will I know what aberrant behaviour I need to correct? I mean, if you like pre-modded windows, and I say I don't, are you going to give me a neg? Ok, fine, but at least say why I am getting a neg. That way I will know if you have a valid point, or you're just rubbish.
How does the whole thing work anyway? I have all reputation things marked with a green square, except one, which is grey. Is that a negative? How does the points thing work? I have 18 points.. what's the weighting of pos v neg? It's all very confusing.
Hmm.. no one's saying much. So.. are green ones positive and grey ones negative? How does the points system work? There's no FAQ, so does that mean on one knows? LOL Confused. Also.. as it is, it's wide open to abuse: If someone suddenly decides they don't like someone else, they can just flood them with negatives, and not have to give a reason, or even identify themselves. Surely it should be mandatory to give a reason at least, and preferably identify yourself. This will end abuse of the system.
Flooding someone with bad reputation points would take a lot of effort because I believe the way the system works means its necessary to award reputation to something like 20-25 other people befoe you can award another reputation rating for someone (precisely to stop the flooding you mention). This means to use reputation to put someone down, they'd have to give at least 26 comments in all just to give someone a negative and be able to to give another negative. Nobody would be that sad surely Reputation points are anonymous because of the friction it could cause with regards to negative comments - the last thing we want is threads going 'Hey you, why did you leave me bad reputation?' As to the weighting of the reputation points, I'm not sure myself, there was some confusion I think when me and some of the other mods were testing it out. Staff/moderators reputation weightings carry more weight, but not all are equal (I'm sure when we were testing it bigz's reputation comments gave more/deducted more points that mine did but I don't really know, truth be told).
It's all a mystery then... [put on deerstalker hat] "Watson.. pass my violin, there's a stout fellow[/put on deerstalker hat]
A point to remember is that it takes a lot of points to get to the good reputation levels, so the odd negative doesn't have much effect. If you get a lot of negatives, perhaps it's worth thinking before you post and checking if it makes sense. Bit more about it here, but the default settings can be altered to suit and Bit's isn't exactly the same as ChiefDelphi's. One change I'd argue for is to disable reputation awarding in forums not covered by Modding & Technical Stuff - a positive or negative in GD or News doesn't have anything to do with the quality of that member's advice in Hardware or Modding.
