Rep Changes

[Vice]

So basically, I could post stuff about "the Apple tax", "the red ring of death" or "Obama's socialist agenda" and I'd be in rep heaven. Does any of this make Neowin better? Does it show my value to Neowin? No, it makes Neowin a less friendly more divided place. That isn't what we want.

You can't blame the rep system for that, blame the community that thinks the same on those controversial matters. Now without the ability to +1 a post you'll just get posters quoting the original post and putting "+1" after it. Even Neobond has done it in this very thread after the deactivation of the point system :laugh:

Turning upvoting on/off won't change the mentality of the forum posters or stop trolling.

[Darth Laidher]

With the previous system, highly opinionated posts received +1 votes from like-minded people.

You could get the most rep point by:

Attacking Apple outside of the Apple forums

Attacking Microsoft in the Sony Console Forum

Attacking Sony in the Microsoft Console Forum

Attacking either Democrats or Republicans in Real World Issues / Domestic Politics

So basically, I could post stuff about "the Apple tax", "the red ring of death" or "Obama's socialist agenda" and I'd be in rep heaven. Does any of this make Neowin better? Does it show my value to Neowin? No, it makes Neowin a less friendly more divided place. That isn't what we want.

I haven't seen any of those example's, except maybe the Obama socialist agenda which actually might be a true statement :p

[Steven P. Administrators]

People agree with what they want. You can't control that. Simply labeling upvoting of contraversial posts as abusing the system is you believing everyone should agree with your concept of right and wrong. That wont ever happen.

I understand that you guys own the site and run it how you wanna run it but at the same time you need us to be here for the site to function and at some point you have to negotiate with the community, you aren't selling a service or a product your hosting a website that requires the community to create the content. It can't always be a one way street or the users will go to other sites with more democratic decision making.

Our rules weren't decided on by the community?

Plus I think you'd agree that it is better to highlight the true good contributors over the trolls of any community, that can only benefit the membership and new members on the whole, and that system is something we didn't have, but will implement.

[Sethos]

Oh yeah, expect to see a new surge of "+1" posts instead :p

[ATGC]

Restrict voting to Hardware Hangout, Internet, Network & Security, etc. You know, the good sub-forums.

[Darth Laidher]

Oh yeah, expect to see a new surge of "+1" posts instead :p

+1

[SimplySchizo]

With the previous system, highly opinionated posts received +1 votes from like-minded people.

You could get the most rep point by:

Attacking Apple outside of the Apple forums

Attacking Microsoft in the Sony Console Forum

Attacking Sony in the Microsoft Console Forum

Attacking either Democrats or Republicans in Real World Issues / Domestic Politics

So basically, I could post stuff about "the Apple tax", "the red ring of death" or "Obama's socialist agenda" and I'd be in rep heaven. Does any of this make Neowin better? Does it show my value to Neowin? No, it makes Neowin a less friendly more divided place. That isn't what we want.

True story!

[Vice]

Our rules weren't decided on by the community?

Plus I think you'd agree that it is better to highlight the true good contributors over the trolls of any community, that can only benefit the membership and new members on the whole, and that system is something we didn't have, but will implement.

If you know who the trolls are kick em. Why should the mods have to keep cleaning up there posts constantly. Become zero tolerance if your serious about stopping trolling. But this will have to be forum wide not just the gamers hangout.

[DJD]

Restrict voting to Hardware Hangout, Internet, Network & Security, etc. You know, the good sub-forums.

+1 :rofl: , just disable it on the forums where it gets the most abuse.

[Steven P. Administrators]

If you know who the trolls are kick em. Why should the mods have to keep cleaning up there posts constantly. Become zero tolerance if your serious about stopping trolling. But this will have to be forum wide not just the gamers hangout.

No, we know (most of) them, but rep voting is anonymous, so how would we know?

[+Frank B. Subscriber²]

If you know who the trolls are kick em. Why should the mods have to keep cleaning up there posts constantly. Become zero tolerance if your serious about stopping trolling. But this will have to be forum wide not just the gamers hangout.

There's a whole bunch of members I can think of who'd have to be insta-banned under a zero-tolerance system.

[Growled Member]

To be honest I'm not sure any system that allows member voting is going to work here.

[Unrealistic]

With the previous system, highly opinionated posts received +1 votes from like-minded people.

You could get the most rep point by:

Attacking Apple outside of the Apple forums

Attacking Microsoft in the Sony Console Forum

Attacking Sony in the Microsoft Console Forum

Attacking either Democrats or Republicans in Real World Issues / Domestic Politics

So basically, I could post stuff about "the Apple tax", "the red ring of death" or "Obama's socialist agenda" and I'd be in rep heaven. Does any of this make Neowin better? Does it show my value to Neowin? No, it makes Neowin a less friendly more divided place. That isn't what we want.

This just happened the past few days in the Gamer's Hangout and was honestly ****ing me off. People with like minded opinions that were attacking the subject kept giving +1's to each other on EVERY post, while the ones supporting a product were not getting any reputation. I don't really use the rep, but it was annoying to see all of their negative posts +1/2/3 etc.

It almost felt as if there were people trying to derail a topic and destroy it. It was probably the first time on Neowin where I did not want to continue posting. Alas, I continued. :/

[Vice]

No, we know (most of) them, but rep voting is anonymous, so how would we know?

I'm sorry but again you cannot consider +1 voting something trolling. It is passive agreeing with something someone has said. Even if you don't like the original statement you can't call people who support and share that idea trolls just for agreeing. This is like the thought police.

And remember you put the system in to allow users to do just that, agree with other peoples posts.

[+Frank B. Subscriber²]

I'm sorry but again you cannot consider +1 voting something trolling. It is passive agreeance with something someone has said. Even if you don't like the original statement you can't call people who support and share that idea trolls just for agreeing. This is like the thought police.

When several people on IRC decide 'Cool, let's upvote that troll post!' it is trolling the system.

I've seen it happen more than once, and will admit to having participated in it several times despite knowing better.

[Prince Charming]

I'm sorry but again you cannot consider +1 voting something trolling. It is passive agreeing with something someone has said. Even if you don't like the original statement you can't call people who support and share that idea trolls just for agreeing. This is like the thought police.

And remember you put the system in to allow users to do just that, agree with other peoples posts.

This raises a valid point. Opinions on forums are going to be split on most topics, especially the more controversial ones (it is the nature of a forum, no discussion would be had if everyone was always in agreement). Where do you draw the line at voting someone's post that others may disagree with a troll? It's a fairly dangerous path, and whilst I liked the rep system, and did support the changes regarding Staff/MVC being able to negative rep, maybe it is better gone all together.

[Singh400]

We are doing this because the repuation system currently isn't about quality or helpfullness... its a popularity club. Or a place for trolls to rep other troll posts. If you look at some of the highest repped members you'll see what we mean.

I haven't noticed it was a popularity club, but then again I don't judge a member by what his/her rep status is. No doubt there is a clique present on Neowin, but the fact (taking you word for it) they go around +rep each other is more a reflection on themselves and what a pathetic individuals there are.

I disabled reputation system

This is the way forward (Y)

It might be an idea to just allow staff to downvote and block the rep system from everyone else.

What would that achieve? Staff already have the power to warn members and slap them with a temp ban. Which in my opinion works perfectly fine. If you down rep a troll that won't stop them. They'll carry on, until they get a ban.

Sorry but when I look at certain profiles of active members here with serious (long) warn logs and see their rep is huge, it makes me think the system is completely worthless.

I don't see how rep and warn status is linked. Just because you have had runs in with the staff, doesn't mean you can't be a helpful member...

Finally someone at the top realised how useless the system is and was, it was bound to fail as a quality assessment tool from day one.

Happy to see it go.

With the previous system, highly opinionated posts received +1 votes from like-minded people.

You could get the most rep point by:

Attacking Apple outside of the Apple forums

Attacking Microsoft in the Sony Console Forum

Attacking Sony in the Microsoft Console Forum

Attacking either Democrats or Republicans in Real World Issues / Domestic Politics

So basically, I could post stuff about "the Apple tax", "the red ring of death" or "Obama's socialist agenda" and I'd be in rep heaven. Does any of this make Neowin better? Does it show my value to Neowin? No, it makes Neowin a less friendly more divided place. That isn't what we want.

Again, not something I have noticed.

And to be clear, I don't +1 someone if I agree with them (unless it was really heated debate in the politics section, in which case I was probably guilty a few times). I +1 them if they were particular helpful. Like someone posted a cool way to invoke Microsoft Update using PowerShell, or in my first week as a member Richard Hammond posted a smart trick to enable ACHI in the registry without having to re-install Windows 7. Other than that I think my +1's were given out in the Jokes section.

[Steven P. Administrators]

Yeah I wonder if anyone can tell me what value the rep system had in its current form, due to the fact that it can be easily abused (as was proven) so imo it's also a false reading of the quality of posts/members using the system?

I didn't abuse it, and I know that some others didn't, but when others can, then it fails immediately.

It's our job to fix it, and thats what we've decided. As I have already explained a few times since disabling the rep system. :rolleyes:

[Darth Laidher]

I'm sorry but again you cannot consider +1 voting something trolling. It is passive agreeing with something someone has said. Even if you don't like the original statement you can't call people who support and share that idea trolls just for agreeing. This is like the thought police.

And remember you put the system in to allow users to do just that, agree with other peoples posts.

Yep.I haven't seen to many posts that have rep points for calling people an idiot or your views are ignorant or whatever.Those to me are examples of trolling and I don't think I've ever seen a post repped that had a simular style of trolling.

I've mainly seen them rep opinions of users.Opinions that are not trolling.Like for instance In the gun debate threads I would discuss why I thought it was right to have them. Some agreed with me some didn't that's not trolling is it? and on the flip side I've seen people agree with the other side that doesn't agree to have gun's. Should they be treated as trolls because I don't agree with their opinion? No I don't think so.

[Hani]

When several people on IRC decide 'Cool, let's upvote that troll post!' it is trolling the system.

I've seen it happen more than once, and will admit to having participated in it several times despite knowing better.

but how much does this account for total rep points? I've never visited IRC & my posts are mostly troll free, yet I used to have 185 points.

[Nightwind Hawk]

Hey, I skimmed through this and other threads but didn't see any answer... my rep on the posts have completely disappeared! I can't +1 or see other's rep on the posts... is that normal?

[+Frank B. Subscriber²]

but how much does this account for total rep points? I've never visited IRC & my posts are mostly troll free, yet I used to have 185 points.

In some cases - brentaal, tiagosilva29 - it accounted for the majority of the member's reputation points.

[Singh400]

Yeah I wonder if anyone can tell me what value the rep system had in its current form, due to the fact that it can be easily abused (as was proven) so imo it's also a false reading of the quality of posts/members using the system?

It had none, it was just another form of ePeen. If the intended idea was for me to skip posts without a +1 and just read the +1 posts. It failed, because I like to read an entire thread. The good, the bad and the ugly posts.

Hey, I skimmed through this and other threads but didn't see any answer... my rep on the posts have completely disappeared! I can't +1 or see other's rep on the posts... is that normal?

Please read the entire thread. In short the system has been disappeared.

[Prince Charming]

Hey, I skimmed through this and other threads but didn't see any answer... my rep on the posts have completely disappeared! I can't +1 or see other's rep on the posts... is that normal?

Yes. The reputation system is disabled.

[Darth Laidher]

but how much does this account for total rep points? I've never visited IRC & my posts are mostly troll free, yet I used to have 185 points.

I had 37 all of which I would hunt down to see what they were about and most if not all were thoughtful post's. I was gaining fast, Should I be punished?