Vagabond: Rep is something I'd back if it benefits in a material form. Such as 1000 rep points gets you a $9.99 game.
GoJays2025: What's stopping everyone from abusing that by giving rep to everyone else so they'd all get free games?
Seems like that would make the problem worse. It's an easily abused system with no penalties for abuse. People get an unlimited number of posts they can rep and are able to do it anonymously. Hence the dicks that think it's amusing to down rep people because they disagree with their statement or take offense to the tone.
Slashdot has a system for dealing with that sort of thing, it's not perfect, but it does limit the damage that a few dumb asses can cause. You only get a few points that you can use to change people's standing, they're limited in duration and somebody checks to make sure it's reasonable. Too many bad reps and they don't let you do it any more.
hedwards: Eh, perhaps if folks start up repping every third post this foolishness can stop. Unlimited repping is going to lead to these sorts of abuses as certain people around here are going to abuse the hell out of it. It's not meaningful to have somebody's post skyrocket several hundred points in a day or two. I'm sorry, but nobody is legitimately that insightful, funny or helpful.
EDIT: I see somebody felt the need to down rep me again, for pointing out the obvious. They can pretty much screw off.
Gundato: So your solution to avoid rep abuse is to do rep abuse?
Let the people who do rep-abuse do whatever they want (either way). But things will work a lot better if others don't feel the need to join in.
See someone's rep plummeting? Laugh and listen to The Final Countdown (that is what I do :p). See someone's rep skyrocketing? Shake your head and walk away.
Seriously, the rep system has issues, it does not need everyone "fixing" it. Let the GoG staff do whatever.
Are they fixing it? I mean it's been broken for quite a while. At least abusing it in that fashion doesn't give any illusion that rep has any relation to standing in the community.
Plus with all the flamewars that have broken out recently surrounding rep they ought to be yanking it.
