A person can express their opinion in a post like a real mature person. Positive rep(as I assume you are alluding to) will only contribute to better discussions. If you disagree with someone, you explain your reasoning in a post or PM. Helps you take responsibility for your views and promotes interaction in a better way i feel.
Basically what you just described is visitor messages. A way to only positively express your feelings of another user. If we apply too many rules and regulations to reputation comments it may as well just be a post, a pm, or a visitor message.
We provided a basic rule of no insulting someone. That didn't work because people complained about positive and negative rep spam. So we implemented a "do not discuss in public" rule. Hoping less complaining would mean less attention to someones rep, would mean less rep spam. People still weren't pleased with that. So we implemented the "reputation will be null if no reason given" rule in hopes that people would explain why they gave positive AND negative rep. That's just going to be a lot of work, and people still aren't happy with it.
We're pretty much running out of things we can do while keeping the system balanced and in the users hands.
We CANNOT decide what is fair and what isn't as far as rep is concerned. If we get that deeply into it, we may as well just get rid of rep all together.
It's a system meant to be governed by the users. That's the ideal behind it. Some people aren't going to like you, some are. The same for posts and comments you make. It's all based on opinion.
If we start taking away peoples right to their own opinion and only allow positive things to be said it defeats the balance of the system in any form.
How about making positive rep worth less? That will make users have to work harder for positive rep and discourage rep trading (more effort for less points, too much trouble).
With a little work this MAY be possible. It's hard to tweak a system like this when it's already in use.
The way we designed it before really worked pretty well, it's just we didn't expect people to be using reputation this much. It takes quite a bit of rep to get anywhere it's just there's a lot of "rep spam" and trading going on.
Why would it be so difficult to keep the good and remove the bad? Balance can be achieved through the infraction system or report a post function.
You break the rule,you lose reputation.
You post something that does not appeal to a person for their specific taste and they send you a PM to explain why.
It's way better this way. But that is just my personal opinion again.
The point of the reputation system is to have a user controlled way to "rate" one another. If we gave negative rep for infractions what'd be the point? Besides infractions result in bans.
Quote from "Azriel »
[B]5.) New users who only deal out more negative rep than positive rep should be given infractions. [/B']This will stop rep trolls.
This can't happen. Users start with 10 rep power which means they can give 1 positive rep point, and 1 negative.
You can give half of your positive rep as negative later on.
So say you can give 8 positive rep, you can only negative rep for 4.
Just as an example, I have one of the highest reps on the site. When I give positive rep it gives +13, when I leave negative rep it gives -7. Which on average is easily remedied by anyone's +rep.
The point of the rep system is to provide a fairly balanced way of "rating" users based on other users personal opinions.
Don't you think your two suggestions sort of off balance it completely? It would only be good reputation comments then.
The second suggestion would require an IMMENSE amount of work just to deem all negative reps as "fair" or "justified" which is pretty much impossible because it's a system based on opinions.
I'm all for any improvements that you guys might suggest but that's just my thoughts so far.
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Basically what you just described is visitor messages. A way to only positively express your feelings of another user. If we apply too many rules and regulations to reputation comments it may as well just be a post, a pm, or a visitor message.
We provided a basic rule of no insulting someone. That didn't work because people complained about positive and negative rep spam. So we implemented a "do not discuss in public" rule. Hoping less complaining would mean less attention to someones rep, would mean less rep spam. People still weren't pleased with that. So we implemented the "reputation will be null if no reason given" rule in hopes that people would explain why they gave positive AND negative rep. That's just going to be a lot of work, and people still aren't happy with it.
We're pretty much running out of things we can do while keeping the system balanced and in the users hands.
It's a system meant to be governed by the users. That's the ideal behind it. Some people aren't going to like you, some are. The same for posts and comments you make. It's all based on opinion.
If we start taking away peoples right to their own opinion and only allow positive things to be said it defeats the balance of the system in any form.
With a little work this MAY be possible. It's hard to tweak a system like this when it's already in use.
The way we designed it before really worked pretty well, it's just we didn't expect people to be using reputation this much. It takes quite a bit of rep to get anywhere it's just there's a lot of "rep spam" and trading going on.
The point of the reputation system is to have a user controlled way to "rate" one another. If we gave negative rep for infractions what'd be the point? Besides infractions result in bans.
This can't happen. Users start with 10 rep power which means they can give 1 positive rep point, and 1 negative.
You can give half of your positive rep as negative later on.
So say you can give 8 positive rep, you can only negative rep for 4.
Just as an example, I have one of the highest reps on the site. When I give positive rep it gives +13, when I leave negative rep it gives -7. Which on average is easily remedied by anyone's +rep.
Don't you think your two suggestions sort of off balance it completely? It would only be good reputation comments then.
The second suggestion would require an IMMENSE amount of work just to deem all negative reps as "fair" or "justified" which is pretty much impossible because it's a system based on opinions.
I'm all for any improvements that you guys might suggest but that's just my thoughts so far.