Reputation error prompt related to spreading rep around (was: Reputation changes)
 

So today I tried repping a couple people and they told me they never received the reps. I tried again and notice that the rep system's changed--we can now open up the give-rep menu to anyone, but if we attempt to do so to someone we've repped before too soon, it pops it up as a message saying you can't do so yet, as if you'd just given them a rep--something a LOT of people, I imagine, don't even bother reading when repping someone.

Why the change?

I read there is a certain number of reps to be give per 24 hr period...

That's not the message I'm getting, I haven't given out enough to hit that limit. It's giving me the option to rep anyone, including people I've repped too recently, and only giving me the message saying I can't do that yet after I try to apply the rep, instead of giving me the pop-up message immediately.

I seemed to encountered something like that in the past.. a bug? But it disappeared days after...

As far as I know, this is not an intended change (at least, I don't think any of the staff did anything recently). So perhaps it is a bug; not clear at this point. I guess we'll have to do some testing and see if we can reproduce consistently.

That's been the policy for as long as I have been here. If you try to rep someone a second time without having given rep to other people in the interim, you won't be able to do so. This policy is designed to keep pairs of members from artificially increasing each other's rep score.

It's right there in the Reputation FAQ:

From what Rising Dragon said he does know this. What he had problem with is that the message that you are not allowed to post more rep happened after he wrote the rep comment and tried to give it away. If you already gave that person rep then the message should appear the moment you click on the rep button to give out more. Not after the little menu already appeared.

I don't think that's possible to implement unless the vBulletin code is rewritten. Clicking the rep button launches a Javascript program to pop-up the rep box. As far as I know, it doesn't check with the server to see whether giving rep to this person follows the rules. That can only happen once the rep is POSTed to the server. Then vB can check the database to determine whether this rep is legitimate under the rules.

I don't see this as all that big of a deal. Most reps I've gotten are a line or occasionally two lines in length. It's not like people are writing long compositions in the rep box.

Yeah, this, pretty much. It's now made me wonder how many reps I've handed out now that people haven't received because it's not acting the way it should.

Why don't you ask them?

So having just randomly received an anonymous neg rep, I thought I'd just ignore it and move on.. I get anonymous positives as well, gotta live with it..

Then I realized that the "reason" that was inserted was an emoticon of a penis.. So this brings up the question, what do we do about censoring or reviewing inappropriate anonymous messages via rep changes?

You should always report anything that breaks our forum rules, including messages by rep, profile or PM. In this particular case, I'll edit and remove the message in question.

How about doing away with the rep system altogether? From where I see, it just breeds unnecessary bitterness. I don't see any use for neg-reps apart from calling names to people anonymously or looking down on them(and no, I'm not venting out my own bitterness here). If removing the rep system is not possible then at least remove the neg-rep or if even that is not possible then at least remove the anonymity. Disabling the rep just seems like you are hiding *sigh*

I'll just say that the staff are quite well-aware of the drawbacks of the rep system (since we have to address much of the fallout of these drawbacks), and there have been various conversations that have occurred about what can be done (that have actually been going on for years now). For now I'd just say to sit tight a bit longer.

I suspect that the mods and staff will never allow the rep system to be removed or severely altered, since they're the most popular[/karmaconspiracy].

OK, serious time now. Is this thread open for discussion of the reputation system in general, or is this only for any bugs encountered with the system?

That is simply not the case on either front, but deciding what to do is not as easy as it seems, because each choice has consequences.

This thread was intended to report a possible bug, which as it turns out was by design (for better or worse). So I think I will lock this thread given that the main issue was solved. There have been other threads in the past making general comments about the reputation system, and I would prefer the conversation continue in those threads if necessary (so the same points aren't repeated without consideration for what has already been said before).

(If it's about how neg rep without a good reason is unfair, though... see my many, many previous posts about this.)