is it only possible to increase a member’s reputation?
i think i remember a time in the past (here) when it was possible to
either increase or decrease…
do i misremember, or was that “all grown-up” feature removed to keep
the kids from fighting during milk and cookies or nap time? 
–
palladium
IMHO, removing the whole “grown-up-feature” aka “member reputation” would show some “grown-up” attitude towards the real spirit of a technically orientated forum.
Who needs this child’s play anyway?
i can easily agree with that…
because, if there is no way decrease reputation there should be no way
to increase it…
–
palladium
And even if there is such a “feature” it is of no real use, let me show you a recent experiment of mine.
As you might know, there is the “feature” of rating a thread, so I thought to myself “let’s see how easy it is to make Pavlov’s dog bark”.
So I searched for a really terrible thread (not too hard here, I might add :-)) and found this piece of junk here:
there is no wireless option in my NetworkManager - openSUSE Forums
Why does it qualify for being “terrible”?
Well, not only are the questions/descriptions by the OP of no real value, but also the help offered is nothing but wild stabbing into the darkness.
After nearly two pages, a lot of useless updates/installations have been done and without (as expected) any success, because there were no questions on the problem itself (which wireless card? kernel module loaded, output of low-level commands like iwconfig/ifconfig/etc.) or even a hint to the stickies in the wireless section.
So I used the “great feature” of rating this thread as “Terrible” (= one star) and not even 5 minutes later, the thread was rated “average” (= three stars) with two votes, now I wonder who rated this thread “Excellent” (= five stars and which drugs she/he might use) to get that average.
As I said, child’s play and only interesting for testing if Pavlov was right (he was, obviously).
yes BUT, there is always a chance to increase one’s post count and
reputation if you stab in the dark long enough–and offer this info:
“If my post helped, You can Rep above”
you know it may have been that POJ ‘Piece Of Junk’ ] thread which
sent me on the search for how to unRep a poster…
–
palladium
Hmm… I can add “negative” reputation point (I approve/I disapprove).
Maybe this option is only available to forums staff?
Yes, looks like it.
Why not making it a lot easier and just delete this useless bunch of c.r.a.p. and while you’re at it, let the “rate thread”-feature “walk the plank”, too.
As forum’s staff you still can warn/ban/kick users without this, so where’s the use of it (except experiments for hobby psychologists like me g)?
Spyhawk wrote:
> Maybe this option is only available to forums staff?
which mean what? that the un-mods can well recognize/rate good help
but only mods can see and judge the not-so-good, through worthless to
down-right-dangerous to the system?
–
palladium
I absolutely agree with Akoellh. Rating users or threads is just needless and no help at all - it was introduced in forum software mainly to motivate members posting more, but in a technical forum this is of no value. TaraIkeda for example has been voted down quite a lot (by the forum-staff only as we know now), but this rating was due to his provocative statements in the chitchat-subforum, not because of his unixoid skills. He / she is still able to provide good help and hints - a user judging his help by TaraIkedas “reputation” will be quite confused whether to follow his advice or not.
One idea from another (non-computer) forum I follow is to rate postings rather than posters. Beside each post are a pair of +/- buttons. The cumulative total is shown (can be -ve). You can only rate a previous post in the thread if you have made a post yourself. You may not change your rating afterwards. And at the end of each week there are winners for the most points. It may not work without some modification for this forum but I think the central idea of rating postings is better than rating posters.
It may not work without some modification for this forum but I think the central idea of rating postings is better than rating posters.
Dunno… providing help should not be considered a competition. When reading this:
And at the end of each week there are winners for the most points.
…I still see no value to that. I bet whoever is posting here more frequently does so for two major reasons:
• Altruism and its various strange derivatives
• To learn
…while reputation points or being “winner of the week” would hardly motivate anyone to help. I hope.
Well as I said, it was a totally different kind of forum, actually it’s http://www.ozbargain.com.au so the subject matter is quite different. Still, there was a spirit of altruism there too. I don’t think the top posters did it to get the prizes, but to be well-regarded. The prizes there were provided by sponsors.
As I said, I don’t think it would work as is, but I think the posting should be the focus, not the person. Personally I don’t care about rep points since I get my kicks from solving problems that pose a challenge.
Well, actually I do think that reputation system is valuable in technical forums (and I believe that everyone should be able to negatively rate, too). It does not motive people to post more, only to post more good/useful answer - which is highly valuable 
On the contrary, posts count is useless imho.
Except that spammers are nearly always associated with a post count of 1, or perhaps < 5 if they have managed to slip a few in before getting reported. Note, the inference is one way; I am not labelling newbies as spammers.
There’s another reason why individual posts should be rated rather than the poster. It allows people to see which answers are regarded as useful. You could use it to order a thread by usefulness. Forget about the prize idea, I do think that rating posts is better than rating posters. If you click on my rep button, it boosts all my posts, even for the posts where I have been writing silly things. It also gives latecomers a better chance of being noticed for writing informative answers.
On Wed, 24 Mar 2010 13:56:02 +0000, gropiuskalle wrote:
>> It may not work without some modification for this forum but I think
>> the central idea of rating postings is better than rating posters.
>
> Dunno… providing help should not be considered a competition. When
> reading this:
It’s not that it’s a competition, it’s to allow people who have received
good help to be able to indicate that someone is knowledgeable.
When receiving help, it’s always useful to be able to judge the skills of
the person providing help, and the reputation counter - if used enough -
is one way of doing that.
If you were to receive assistance from someone that included a
potentially dangerous option, would you be more likely to trust that it
was valid if you knew the person had given good advice in the past, as
opposed to someone who had given bad advice in the past? A post counter
won’t tell you that, so the idea is to be able to measure the quality of
the posts that someone makes and provide something to help the reader
judge whether or not those posts are likely to be useful/helpful or not.
Now I don’t know about negative reputation - I thought that feature was
available to everyone, so I’ll check into that.
Jim
–
Jim Henderson
openSUSE Forums Administrator
On Wed, 24 Mar 2010 14:46:01 +0000, ken yap wrote:
> Except that spammers are nearly always associated with a post count of
> 1, or perhaps < 5 if they have managed to slip a few in before getting
> reported. Note, the inference is one way; I am not labelling newbies
> as spammers.
True, though there have been some spammers who have tried to get clever
on us, too. But we’ve gotten pretty good at spotting those as well.
> There’s another reason why individual posts should be rated rather than
> the poster. It allows people to see which answers are regarded as
> useful. You could use it to order a thread by usefulness. Forget about
> the prize idea, I do think that rating posts is better than rating
> posters. If you click on my rep button, it boosts all my posts, even for
> the posts where I have been writing silly things. It also gives
> latecomers a better chance of being noticed for writing informative
> answers.
Fair points, and definitely something to consider.
Jim Henderson
openSUSE Forums Administrator
Jim Henderson wrote:
> When receiving help, it’s always useful to be able to judge the skills of
> the person providing help, and the reputation counter - if used enough -
> is one way of doing that.
i well understand the need for those not here long enough to figure
out for themselves who knows and who might not, but one problem is
that sometimes the enthusiastic, helpful and caring but yet unseasoned
is here a month or two (or less) and is very willing to begin
sharing with the person who just arrived…
and, what may sound great, and appear to work in the view of both the
two members, earns a rep no matter that the advice might work in one
situation, but certainly not all, safely (i’m thinking about the
“chmod 777” (or whatever is that ‘they’ seem to ‘teach’ as the
solution to all permission ‘problems’ (really symptoms of the problem
which remains untreated) in some other fora, etc etc etc)
well…i do not know the answer…perhaps leaving the ‘power’ to
downgrade reps in the hands of mods is okay…but, if so then i think
they also should be the only ones with rep building power…
otherwise we get into the situation where not only do we have the
blind leading the blind, but also we will have those flagged with a
wonderful reputation AND loads of posts…not an ideal situation…
ymmv
–
palladium
it was introduced in forum software mainly to motivate members posting more
You could post a zillion posts and still have poor rep
On the other hand you may well be classed ‘Gecko God’, which would be conflicting if you had crappy rep.
Do we have any ‘Super Wise Penguins or Gecko Gods’, that have crappy rep?
I doubt it.
Are you guys saying for example. The image the forum paints of @ken_yap is not correct?
caf4926 wrote:
> Are you guys saying for example. The image the forum paints of @ken_yap
> is not correct?
no, i’m saying i saw an answer (actually several by one person) and
wanted to unRep by one…but, couldn’t and was therefore
surprised…just doesn’t make sense (to me) that i can rep up, but not
down…
–
palladium
no, i’m saying i saw an answer (actually several by one person) and
wanted to unRep by one…
Exactly the kind of kindergarten behaviour such rating systems generate. They are of no help and are easy to manipulate, too. If one feels the need to comment on an article, one should do so by posting a comment, not by clicking some pixels that might seem too green for someone. This is even more crucial in a technical forum; if someone posts sheer bullsh|t, others users should say so and clearly point out the mistakes. Giving reputation points (or decreasing them) is actually a no-comment (within a thread).