Quote:
Originally Posted by Jan-Poo
The problem lies on the assumption that the userbase will make an appropiate use of the reputation system, but that's hardly the case in my experience. So what a high score actually reflects is how much one is popular, which isn't the same thing as how much respectful of the rules and good mannered one is.
One can easily get bad scores for saying things that are unpopular, but not necessarily wrong. And if one lets himself be affected by it, he might end up giving up speaking his own mind honestly when he knows that what he thinks is unpopular.
|
Eh, I can't really agree with this because I generally tend to have unpopular opinions on this forum and look at my bars. The only reason I have this many bars is because a select few posters, with more influence than the myriad of little red dots I tend to get, appreciate my alternate viewpoints and voice on the forum. Certainly people can "farm" rep in many ways, whether it be making sigs and avies, or posting in a manner that is just trying to appeal to others.... But I think there are enough examples of people with lots of green rep, when they weren't even generally the most liked on the forum, to debunk that.
I mean look at what my user cp was like recently:
-----
That said, I don't care much for the reputation system and in reality I think doing away with it will do the forum some much needed good. Unfortunately not everyone
can be as amazing as me is that willing to express their opinion if its not aligned with the vast majority of people because the threat of negative rep actively discourages them. We can tell them all we want how meaningless such a system is in the grander scheme of a forum, but people do seem to take those little colored dots to heart.
Now I understand that people want to feel like they're being "rewarded" for their efforts in building a community around here and that their status as veterans will be revoked by this change, but frankly, I am just getting a pretty elitist vibe from some of the complaints in this thread. People want to be rewarded for posting on a forum like it is some sort of videogame? This is not the point of a forum, a forum is a place to host discussions. Discussions can happen whether you've been here since the inception of AS, or if you are a user who just registered today. You are freely able to express yourself no matter how old or new you are.
The reward of building a community is that your contribution encourages others to contribute as well. If you encourage more people come out to talk and create interesting discussions, is that not a reward itself?