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Reputation on forums!

Altair

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What is your opinion of reputation on forums?
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When I think of reputation I think of people giving reputation out like 1 saying this person did this for example. I don't think of it has of not gathering likes from posts.
I'm not fond of this and tend to avoid forums with this. I am a member of a forum that does this but it is rare.
 
What is your opinion of reputation on forums?
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When I think of reputation I think of people giving reputation out like 1 saying this person did this for example. I don't think of it has of not gathering likes from posts.
I'm not fond of this and tend to avoid forums with this. I am a member of a forum that does this but it is rare.
imo everyone makes mistakes so I think it’s unfair when they have a reputation feature for that reason.

All account warnings on here are kept private.
 
imo everyone makes mistakes so I think it’s unfair when they have a reputation feature for that reason.

All account warnings on here are kept private.
You misunderstood but I was not clear on my opinion.
For example: Member gave 1 reputation for You like kitties. :wub: for example. Positive things.
I have seen forums that will allow member to retract reputation points which is even crazier.
 
You misunderstood but I was not clear on my opinion.
For example: Member gave 1 reputation for You like kitties. :wub: for example. Positive things.
I have seen forums that will allow member to retract reputation points which is even crazier.
ohh my bad, So you mean similar to Reddit where they have an upvote and downvote?
or I believe Mybb has a reputation system?
 
Yeah I agree they can be fun but can be bad at the same time.
 
IMO it's pretty useless.

And one thing I'd definitely do on a forum with a reputation system, is disable negative reputation. People who post in good faith, but just get something wrong or get disagreed with, will be put off if they're given negative reputation - whereas the actual problem users will see negative reputation as a badge of honour. So having negative reputation just benefits a few trolls, at the expense of everyone else.
 
IMO it's pretty useless.

And one thing I'd definitely do on a forum with a reputation system, is disable negative reputation. People who post in good faith, but just get something wrong or get disagreed with, will be put off if they're given negative reputation - whereas the actual problem users will see negative reputation as a badge of honour. So having negative reputation just benefits a few trolls, at the expense of everyone else.
A take a better approach, Like on this forum I rather have reaction score, ranks, active score, that way users know how active the user is.
Reputation systems are useless imo too.
 
I think it's sort of redundant to have a reputation system, because people only ever upvote their friends and will "neg-bomb" people they don't like. It's a useless system that, while novel when it first came out, doesn't do much for the forum or the membership.
 
Forum reputation systems make more sense on sites with marketplaces.
Similarly, a strong administration upholds the integrity of these systems.
 
I avoid joining sites with karma/rep systems. They are easily abused by members.
Totally agreed. We used to have a rep system on a forum I ran, GameWinners, it got so bad we actually had to change the system into more of a quick commenting system that didn't add or subtract from any sort of score. People would "neg bomb" users for no reason...it got bad! Better off without them.
 
oh man, this was definitely a think back in 2008 ish. You could not be more popular if you were staff on the same x amount of forums that were online during that time. Sometimes the most popular people were like staff on 10 forums or something. Nowadays it's far less important. I couldn't give two fucks about my popularity tbf.
 
I think it's sort of redundant to have a reputation system, because people only ever upvote their friends and will "neg-bomb" people they don't like. It's a useless system that, while novel when it first came out, doesn't do much for the forum or the membership.
Reaction GIF by MOODMAN


This is 100% correct. I've seen it being used as a weapon numerous times, mainly as a silencing tool against the unlike-minded individuals. I even got neg-bombed for being nice and friendly to other people. According to the neg-bombers, I was "sucking up", because I was polite and resepectul toward the forum moderators.

Star Trek Wow GIF
 
Reaction GIF by MOODMAN


This is 100% correct. I've seen it being used as a weapon numerous times, mainly as a silencing tool against the unlike-minded individuals. I even got neg-bombed for being nice and friendly to other people. According to the neg-bombers, I was "sucking up", because I was polite and resepectul toward the forum moderators.

Star Trek Wow GIF
Yep, that happened frequently in the prime "rep" era. Not a good system, imo
 
Forum staff condoned such behavior out of fear of losing members, therefore traffic and ad revenue, justifying it by saying that everyone are entitled to their own opinion and are free to express it via the reputation system. Interestingly enough, they had no problem losing members who were fed up with such system abuse.

They even passively chased such people away by essentially siding with the neg-bombers.
 
Forum staff condoned such behavior out of fear of losing members, therefore traffic and ad revenue, justifying it by saying that everyone are entitled to their own opinion and are free to express it via the reputation system. Interestingly enough, they had no problem losing members who were fed up with such system abuse.

They even passively chased such people away by essentially siding with the neg-bombers.
Well that's a forum you definitely are better off without!
 
It doesn't exist anymore, unless someone kept a backup copy of the entire database. It's a shame, though. It was good forum, primarily dedicated to gaming, but it covered other (general) things too. It ran on an old vBulletin software which was outdated even by that time period's standards, but no one cared. The member base was enormous and the activity was so high some threads were going PAGES per minute. You couldn't even post without a bunch of people cutting in while you were typing.
 
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