[Slydria]

Okay. This isn't gonna be a particularly serious thread because at the end of the day, this is a silly feature of the forums to begin with (which is kinda the problem I think.)

So forum reputation is just a number of how many people say "yay" vs how many say "nay"... Buuuut the problem is a lot of people are giving people +1s or -1s for reasons like "you're cute", "trying to balance out negative rep", "this is stupid" and most of all [no comment]

And then there's stuff like this where two people can list the exact same thing but it's in green or red:



Why do we even have this??? It feels so arbitrary and I frankly don't really wanna moderate on whether the internet points you gave/took away are valid, I'd rather there just not be points, especially when they don't determine whether the things someone says has merit or not. A person with -10 rep can make a good point while a person with +150 can say something profoundly stupid. At best, it may make people feel good about having good boy points and at worst it can be used to demerit someone you don't like and make them feel less special?

Thread rating (1-5 stars) is also doubly pointless I feel for similar reasons.


So I guess ultimately two things, we either take it more seriously and slap down some guidelines to this. Probably something along the lines of:

1) You must include a comment.
2) Do not give good or bad reputation simply because you like or dislike the person.
3) The comment you include should be about their post. (e.g. I think this person made some good points here. I think this argument is faulty.)
4) The comment you include should be explanatory. (Don't just include "wow what an idiot" or "is this guy serious? or "i like this", this isn't helpful.)

Or (preferably to me) Dev takes it out entirely, assuming that's possible.

[Fern]

I'm of the opinion it should disappear since it's frequently used to do 'silly jokes' or grime somebody rather than what it seemed to be intended for (praising someone in detail for constructive criticism/posts, leaving a negative mark on someone playing bad boy, etc.)

And personally, I think you'd be better off not having to moderate something that's likely unnecessary. I think the 'Likes' system is (somewhat) fine, but Reputation is where I feel it gets out of hand and occasionally gets used just to spite someone for no discernible reason.

[GSM]

Reputation is pretty cringe.

I've been de-repped because I made a simple comment to make a joke once, so I'm of the opinion that it shouldn't exist in the first place. Also, yeah, having bad rep may just mean you just disagree with other people, or having good rep means you're a yes-man.

Reject reputation. Return to rational discussion.

[Autumn]

I've witnessed the forum reputation system just being abused to simply berate someone simply because they don't agree with something or dislike a particular event/person. I don't think it should exist anymore, the like system for singular posts however is nice to relay support for a thread outside of adding a unhelpful "+1"

[Shujin]

Personally indiffernt towards it, I never thought it was needed nor really supporting. This is the internet. People can't use it responsible.
I paid no attention to it as all it does is showing who has more fan boys, absolutely irrelevant if that person has truly good ideas or not.

I used the like feature though when I saw a post I overly agree with (Like 75%ish) or find good points are made and is probably more than enough. I doubt anyone will miss the reputation system though, nor do I find its really a problem as I personally do not take it serious or have even used it.

[Tanasinn]

I didn't even know this was a thing, and don't know why it is. It seems pointless in as small and insular a community as we have here, especially since it trips over the like thing and tries to eat the same lunch.

If it can be removed, it seems for the best, especially if it would nonsensically be another thing for GMs to patrol. A complete waste of resources.

[WaifuApple]

I've attempted to use it to outline things that either got a smile out of me, or that I think detracted from the atmosphere, but with nothing to it, it's just an indicator of who likes who, who hates who, who made the funniest joke, and all that lot. It's honestly something that doesn't add much and probably won't because of how it tends to be used, so... all for just getting rid of it. It's not worth moderating.

[Blissey]

If it's being used to berate others and treat them horribly, I'll vote for it being removed. Although I am guilty of using it to joke around, I use it (mostly) seriously (and I've never used it to berate others).

I don't care if thread rating stays or is removed, though; whatever floats Dev's boat on that one.

But yes. Forum rating shouldn't exist if you're able to give people demerits to begin with. It promotes a toxic community, and as Sly said, just because someone has high rep or low rep doesn't make their points any less valid. I'd just rather not see it be used to hurt people.

[Noxid]

I've used it to meme, I've used it to give +1 to posts that are good (not just friends) and I've used it to -1 posts that came across as bad.

It probably should follow some kind of guidelines but I think ultimately it's impossible to enforce because...

2) Do not give good or bad reputation simply because you like or dislike the person.

How would you even prove this either way? It does seem like a waste of GMs time at the end of the day to even try. It should probably be removed. I'll miss giving +1 to kunai and just saying "monke" but it's probably for the best.

[Kameron8]

Positive reputation doesn't correspond with insightful or well-thought-out posts, and negative reputation is tossed around as a childish stamp of "I don't like you". We don't need to have a numerical ranking of who makes the most memes on the forums to get the biggest green number, so it's better off gone entirely.