I just wanted to know if there's a penalty for A. Being interested in more than one thread and posting on both/all in a single day. and B. Having enough spare time that I watch the threads I'm interested in and reply to someone who replies to me not long after their reply is posted. I understand the system works the way it does to discourage spammers, but I wonder if it inadvertently affects us honest users.

You'll only lose reputation if your posts are downvoted by other forum users.

Unfortunately that doesn't guarantee you'll only get downvoted when not acting civilized - there are numerous examples of forum dwellers being downvoted after getting into (forum) arguments or after posting stuff that not everyone looked kindly on.

In essence the reputation system does not work well, if at all.

It doesn't work like that at all. In fact it simply does not work at all in any way other than being exploited by trolls to do what they assume somehow "hurts" other users. They just target some people and downvote them like tinyE described. Rep is entirely meaningless now, has been for quite a while. Just ignroe it. Your number, the number's of others - some people lost hundreds, even thousands of points that way. Right now you're likely to see some terrible people with high rep, because they don't get targeted by the trolls.

I'm a victim:)

Like the other day when I posted that Diablo 2 was a great game? :P

Come off it, the post has nothing to do with it. The poster has everything to do with it.

I could post something like "The sky is blue" and it will get low rated. Someone else in the same thread could post "Hitler was right" and NOTHING will happen to it.

Bollacks!
You will think about how to state something next time,me thinks.Maybe you can explain why posts are spammed into deletion by the nice folk in this place? Not to mention threads at this stage.

Actually, I would argue that the current reputation system works even less well than no reputation system.

In fact, I would argue that "the reputation system system does not work at all" is giving the system too much credit; its value is negative at the moment.

(Side note: I accidentally typed "it's" instead of "its"; given how much that mistake has been annoying me lately, I should try not to make it myself.)

In fact, I have been recently downrated for participating in threads that are clearly gaming related and should not be controversial. Again, and I feel this point is worth emphasizing, I think you are giving too much credit to the rep system by saying it "does not work at all"; at this point I consider it to work *less* well than that.

What TinyE said.

The rep system has worked for years when the community was small and cosy. Now, with more attention, it became clear that it's utterly abuseable.

Inherently there is no penalty to posting several times, in reality, as TinyE said, each post may be up- or downrated by "other users" (including alt-accounts and bots), so the more you post, the more your rep is "vulnerable" to manipulation.

Can you actually lose reputation points multiple times for the same post?

Please forgive my glaring ignorance as I haven't had much personal experience with downvoted posts though that's all about to change now thanks to my recent contributions in the latest of the infamous Beamdog release threads (as far as I'm aware those are the only posts of mine that have been downvoted during the last couple of days).

Now, while I spent some time yesterday upvoting some of the undeservedly downvoted posts (such as this one by vanchann) I couldn't help but notice that one of my own (specifically this one) had been upvoted back into neutral standing by some kind, like-minded users. At this point in time I had already lost 3 points courtesy of posting in that thread but when I checked back today my post was once again low rated and I had lost 2 more points.

So upvoting unfairly downvoted posts seems to be a rather futile act when up against bots and their all-powerful, narrow-minded creators since it'll more than likely result in a further loss of reputation points for the author of the post in question and lost points aren't regained if your post goes from low to 'unrated'.

Whatever happened to fairness GOG?

Wakkalo must have figured out a way because while his script was on me I could go days without posting and still lose six a day which in my mind means he had figured out a way to hit the same few posts over and over over.

Of course, I know shit all about tech so I might be totally wrong.

Next month I have to leave town for a week, so no computer, and I'm dying to know what my rep will be when I get back. :P

I wonder if it's technically possible for fables22 to moderate the rating of posts as well, for example by blocking specific posts from being low rated (perhaps even automatically restoring lost reputation points in the process).

Obviously, it would be best if GOG simply got rid of the whole damn mess of a system but as long as they don't and fables22 is already neck-deep in moderating the forums then she might as well intervene... it's not exactly a pretty sight looking at those release threads and must be harmful for business.

You know that's not true.

He would probably get high-rated.

Vote here to make things happen : https://www.gog.com/wishlist/site/remove_reputation_from_forum

Only on the weekend. XD