Quote:
Originally Posted by Mentar
Since the abolishment of the Reputation system, I feel that the discussions - at least on those threads I frequent - have become noticeably less engaging. Several people who in my opinion wrote longer, well-thought-out postings in the past have either reduced their commitments or stopped posting altogether. The threads have become quieter, and with the exception of people heatedly debating with each other 1:1, the intensity has decreased. More 1-2 liner ditto posts.
(Then again, this is a subjective impression, I have no objective numbers to back up my claim)
Is this what the Board community wanted to achieve? If so, it was a full success. I'm not happy about it.
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I think this happened to a certain extent, and the reputation system is partly behind it. It takes a fair amount of time and effort to write very long posts. With the reputation system you might receive positive reputation from many people for such posts, which was encouraging to continue going. Even though people couldn't +rep each post due to the need to "spread it around," receiving even that initial set alerted you to the fact that other people were reading what you wrote and were "cheering you on," in a way. Now that there's no reputation and "I agree" posts are frowned upon, it's much more empty. You can write a huge post and all you might get back is someone who disagrees with you. You can engage the dissenter(s), but you don't get the spectator/cheerleader effect that the reputation system provided. It's a bit harder to bring a lot of energy to it.
The other part of the equation is the moderation. I think they've become much quicker and responsive about defusing topics that get heated or enter the "cyclical" pattern (which seems to be a back-and-forth between a small group of members who enter the phase of arguing over minutiae). It keeps the peace, for certain, but also results in tamer, less passionate discussions. I've even seen a few cases where forum participants lightly debated about even starting to debate, because they thought that the conversation would get shut down by moderators fairly quickly.
Whether these developments are a good thing or a bad thing is subjective; the forum goes on regardless.