rep

[madman3]

Rep in a nutshell:

It does matter, but only as far as a general indicator of good behavior/who should be trusted in the forums, also as a general way to communicate and say "thank you for what you did" or "no, you shouldn't do that" to someone else.

Fighting and causing drama over a few points of rep isn't worth it, however someone like Andrew having 15 rep is problematic. See my former point about it.

Rep is only as important as it's pragmatic uses are. Otherwise, it isn't. But yet, it should be kept because of those points I brought.

Simply, rep abuse should be fought, as in MNB's sucking Andrew's dick or massive rep circlejerks which are no longer common since not everyone can rep.

I agree with everything being said here.

lol i was just paraphrasing your own words

i'm cool and gtms top dsl builder apparently can i rep people please

wait, what ? you aren't an AU ? this needs to be solved

gtms top dsl builder

Them's fighting words.

voted it by the extremely huge plurality of 4 to 3 people 

[Jonzu95]

"Stop liking what I don't like!"

Classic 2013.

[Naryar]

(Image removed from quote.)

"Stop liking what I don't like!"

Classic 2013.

You mean you weren't trying to purposefully cause drama with your furry avatars back then ? right son

[The Red Blur]

No idea what's going on, but my rep has suddenly shot up by, like, eight points.

[Stigma]

No idea what's going on, but my rep has suddenly shot up by, like, eight points.

Maybe we just love you that much <3
Or MNB is righting some wrongly dished out relative rep. Either is possible.

[DeadGenocide]

*Triggered that rep is now -9*

[The Red Blur]

But the odd thing is that the karma changes aren't any different. I mean, there's no new comments.

[Jonzu95]

(Image removed from quote.)

"Stop liking what I don't like!"

Classic 2013.

You mean you weren't trying to purposefully cause drama with your furry avatars back then ? right son

I never did.

[Reier]

trov was going through and deleting all the bs reps

[madman3]

pretty sure just all of mnb's reps got deleted tbh

[Thrackerzod]

pretty sure just all of mnb's reps got deleted tbh

Nah, at least one from J got deleted too.  He had given me a +rep with the message "pizza toppings" that has since been banished to Tartarus.

[Trovaner]

Now that I've gotten some sleep, allow me to explain myself.

The poll was a wash so I decided to clean it up rather than delete the whole thing. If you got positive or negative rep for reasons that didn't make sense or no reason at all, those records were removed. If the person who applied the rep wanted it to be kept, they should have used a reason that followed the rules. The members who made the biggest mess have had their rep powers removed. I could have saved some time by wiping the whole system clean but I thought it was important for me to get a list of the culprits (not just the people that had their rep powers removed).

After removing all of the blatant trash, the list looks better and I plan to keep it this way. When I get the chance, I'll look into solutions as opposed to band-aids but, in the meantime, stop making a joke of things.

[Scorpion]

Impressive you got through them all Trov GGWP
Now if everybody remains calm, rep can once again at least mean something (kinda i think).

[Fracture]

I know taking away rep privileges was supposed to be a quick and simple solution, but I don't see why it couldn't work in the long run as well.

After reading over the thread, it seems like those who voted No think the system is just useless. I don't think that's the case; at the very least the idea of being able to give and receive quick feedback (without anyone else seeing it) should hold some value. For making it public, I can see why people don't want to be misjudged based on a number, but if only responsible users are allowed to rep then you should have around what you deserve. Again, a compromise could be to only show the 5 most recent rep changes if people are still worried about abuse. But personally I think simply limiting privileges to the responsible users is enough to make a public system work. The one thing I would add is to have a clear set of rules written out to ensure every change has a legitimate reason, which could be supported by the drop-down list I mentioned earlier.

Also if people feel like they're missing out on the fun aspect, you can let regular users do it except their changes don't affect the public score. This would also give an idea of whether or not someone would rep responsibly if they had the actual power.

[Squirrel_Monkey]

Just a quick question. How far back are these recorded? Because I have no idea where my rep is from apart from "good meme"

[playzooki]

Now that I've gotten some sleep, allow me to explain myself.

The poll was a wash so I decided to clean it up rather than delete the whole thing. If you got positive or negative rep for reasons that didn't make sense or no reason at all, those records were removed. If the person who applied the rep wanted it to be kept, they should have used a reason that followed the rules. The members who made the biggest mess have had their rep powers removed. I could have saved some time by wiping the whole system clean but I thought it was important for me to get a list of the culprits (not just the people that had their rep powers removed).

After removing all of the blatant trash, the list looks better and I plan to keep it this way. When I get the chance, I'll look into solutions as opposed to band-aids but, in the meantime, stop making a joke of things.

rip repeating digits reputation

[Merrick]

Gonna be that guy now. Worked hard to build some respect to my rep counter with building and advice, and I'm back down to 1. Sweet.

[Mr. AS]

but, in the meantime, stop making a joke of things.

I feel like the reason people treated rep as a joke (myself included) is probably because it is a joke. One of the things that people have been told time and time again when they say "wowie my rep went down u guise sux"  is that rep is just a number on the internet and that it doesn't really matter, and they're right. Rep is so incredibly flawed right now that getting rid of it or completely reworking it would be way better than what it currently is. Rep in general mostly works (people who contribute in a meaningful way generally have + rep, people who post dumb things generally have - rep), but the exact value of how much rep in either direction seems to be completely random and all over the place. 
For example, why does Serge have 5 rep when he's contributed multiple tools that furthered modding RA2, compared to toAst who's 5 rep can be summed up with "made some funny posts". How come Lemonism has 15+ rep for basically "making cool bots" when Sage only has 10, considering he did the same thing for far longer and way more frequently? How did Jonzu manage to amass negative a billion rep? Certainly his drama queen asshattery (which was mostly in junkyard anyway IIRC) would validate at least some antireputation, but wouldn't his frequent showcasing and hosting of multiple tournaments cancel that out for the most part? How come Joeblo has ~10 rep for doing a lot of tournaments and RA2 modding progress (not to mention being a moderator), while I have ~20 for doing the same thing?
(nothing against you personally Lemonism/toAst, just using you as examples )
Reputation doesn't actually reflect what someone's done for RA2. It really seems that it's mainly a popularity contest as opposed to a measuring how much people have done for RA2, along with not taking contributions made before the latest rep reset into consideration. When it doesn't actually mean anything important, why take it seriously? A spam rep has about as much worth as "funny post!" or "shut up".
This is as opposed to marking people AU/vet, which is at least kind of an indicator of who's done things for furthering RA2, and honestly makes rep a bit redundant. People can get colored titles that say "this guy's good with robits", and you can get numbers that (supposedly) say "this guy's good with robits". Why? IMO you should keep the less flawed system and scrap the other one.

BTW, you said you cleaned up the garbage reps, but you didn't even get all of them. That might be because you decided to manually go through the bazillion pages of meme reps. 25 reps per page, (currently) 51 pages, and assuming you went through all of them means you reviewed roughly 1275 reputation changes... wow. I actually happened to be on when you started doing this, and you were undertaking all this work at 2 or 3 AM. Don't do that to yourself dude.

[yugitom]

You have a very valid point. The only reason Serge doesn't have as much rep as me or anyone else you'd think perhaps deserves it less is because those that hand out rep don't do it as an obligation and do it on a whim. I understand that the system is useless when you look at it like that but I don't see why people can't just see the system as something that just 'is' and is a part of the forum. I was not part of GTM prior to the introduction of reputation, so the rep system has always been there for me and I haven't really questioned it or looked too much into it until lately, it's just always been there. I never saw Serge and toAst as equals (even though Serge would have had more rep than toAst at the time, this is just an example) because of their equal rep. When I ever take notice of rep, I never usually compare it to someone else's and then make judgments and compare, I would make simple judgments on that one person and the rep they have. It also comes with context. I know how toAst is reputable as, whenever I would see him, it'd be him making a 'funny' post. I know how Serge is reputable as he's a Technical Adviser and I usually see him (when lurking past threads) posting about RA2 mods and the like.

Basically, the furthest someone would go into delving into someone's rep is, "is it positive or negative?" Not, "is it higher than that other builder/modder/member?" I know that doesn't excuse misrepresentation but I do think those that argue to remove the system only focus that it doesn't add anything. So, why complain? Why can't it be something GTM has? Something in GTM that just 'is'. We don't necessarily care or know why it's there in the first place but we don't mind living alongside it.

That being said, why was rep introduced? If we can ascertain why it was made in the first place, perhaps we can make things right in order to achieve the goal it set out for.

[Jaydee99]

It's funny, I leave with my rep on 0 but when I come back it's -3. How or why is beyond me but it's part of the reason I'm leaving.
I remember when it used to mean something, if you had worked goddamn hard you deserved something in return,but as someone starts abusing this everyone that could jumped on the bandwagon "haha lol it's funny to downgrade someone for doing nothing" or "he hasn't been here for ages let's put him at the very top rank for nothing" why?
When I first joined reputation... was reputation! A symbol of how much effect you had on the site. If you were a great builder, an awesome tech guy, or a troll with a great number of downvotes. Now, what is it worth? If you've done something good... what recognition do you get? I'm not saying that from a personal viewpoint with my builds, I'm stating a point.


You guys will probably down my rep even more for this, but dammit at least I tried to be helpful and make contributions to the site that newbies and others could find helpful. If I was another user and went on to my guides, I'd probably think bad of myself due to the reputation I had.


"Reputation" is a reputation. Not a stupid number to be messed with. It's a mark of how good you are on the site.