Recommended Posts

There are pitfalls to that though...

As I'm thinking of it now (I've already considered this issue), and note, this may not be the final implementation, the idea could be that the thread starter has 10 points, to allocate amongst the people who helped in the thread as they see fit, and each relevant post gets a link added automatically to the first post.

As I'm thinking of it now (I've already considered this issue), and note, this may not be the final implementation, the idea could be that the thread starter has 10 points, to allocate amongst the people who helped in the thread as they see fit, and each relevant post gets a link added automatically to the first post.
Right, but how do you make sure those points are given out fairly? Lets say Fred posts a problem (and lets assume Fred is a complete newbie, zero post count etc etc). I then post a solution, but I don't have a rep for solving problems. But then Bob comes along and posts a similar solution, and he has a lot of reputation for solving issues. Fred would then give the points to Bob, purely because of his previous reputation. Now I am not saying this would happen all of the time, but it is likely to happen. And it only needs to happen once or twice for someone to think "well I never get any rep so there is no point in posting".

It is a very tricky system to implement. More so, with ANY system you implement is open to abuse to some degree.

Not to mention I have seen some troubleshooting threads go at least 5 pages long with the help of around 6-10 members are pooling their knowledge to resolve the issue.

You could say perhaps give people the ability to rep a person if they themselves have replied in that thread - so going back to Fred, Bob and me. Fred might have given Bob the +1, but Bob (assuming Bob is fair and nice, and all that) sees that I have given the solution first and gives me +1. But they would only have a certain number of reps available to gift per thread.

Sorry if this has been covered already, the problem with the old system was a two-parter, too easy to gain rep and the rep points were useless. With this new system, achievement based or whatever is implemented

you solve one of the problems, what about the other? Why should people care about those reputation points? They need some kinda value for a system like that to ever be truly effective - People need an incentive. Like,

with a right amount of points you could buy subscriptions / reduce your warning by 5/10% / gain some 'exclusive' benefits. It doesn't have to be easy to achieve or something big, just a tiny incentive that has an interest for

members.

Perhaps that's just me?

Some members will never remember/bother to award those points so the staff will likely need to hand out points for abandoned threads. Not that I see a problem with that but I'm pointing that out.

I would encourage members to hand out the points to whomever said it first unless a later post was far more concise or easy to understand. In which case, the OP would hopefully have the option for splitting votes.

Plus, as an overall safeguard, I'd expect that at least some staff would have the ability to redistribute points more fairly (especially if a member complained they were needlessly excluded).

I realize that is a few areas that places staffers in the position to make judgement calls on behalf of others but that is why members were selected to be staff. They do judge what is fair and what is acceptable on a daily basis.

Sorry if this has been covered already, the problem with the old system was a two-parter, too easy to gain rep and the rep points were useless. With this new system, achievement based or whatever is implemented

you solve one of the problems, what about the other? Why should people care about those reputation points? They need some kinda value for a system like that to ever be truly effective - People need an incentive. Like,

with a right amount of points you could buy subscriptions / reduce your warning by 5/10% / gain some 'exclusive' benefits. It doesn't have to be easy to achieve or something big, just a tiny incentive that has an interest for

members.

Perhaps that's just me?

No, I don't think those are bad ideas. It is possible to have a member that causes us unnecessary stress but on the other hand contributes a fair bit of content to certain forums and thus has more value than a pure troublemaker. This would be a way to quantify that relationship. Of course, it would be nice if they would just behave in the first place... :D

No, I don't think those are bad ideas. It is possible to have a member that causes us unnecessary stress but on the other hand contributes a fair bit of content to certain forums and thus has more value than a pure troublemaker. This would be a way to quantify that relationship. Of course, it would be nice if they would just behave in the first place... :D

Yeah I know what you ... Wait, I see what you did thar' :hmmm: :laugh:

Wow, some people here arguing for the sake of it me thinks!?

We survived 9 years and 3 months without the rep system :p And I think we give a lot to this community for very little in return, we aren't all rich by any means, we pay writers and even pay freelance fees to developers, we give away stuff all the time, we invest in the site as a priority before anything else is decided (sending people to tech events etc) recently I even saw one person commenting how we were all undeserving of a get together too, jeez most of the guys here put up with these topics every day of the year for no (forum mods), or little return!

We obviously have a road map for Neowin and there are things in the works that are groundbreaking and will change Neowin for the better, it also isn't free, requires planning and a developer process, so all of your "comments" are taken into account. I think our development process since 2000 has shown we mean business and we give quite a bit to sustain this community; we don't still have active members from 2001 for doing nothing.

The rep system that came with IPB3 does not work for us, and by us I say, yes the management, but also there are a lot of members agreeing to this finding as well, they see it can be easily abused and needs further thought to even be useful.

The minority who feel like they have had it "taken away" from them, well thats just tough, you can't please everyone and I'm sure if I did enable it, there would be something else to whine about.

Right, but how do you make sure those points are given out fairly? Lets say Fred posts a problem (and lets assume Fred is a complete newbie, zero post count etc etc). I then post a solution, but I don't have a rep for solving problems. But then Bob comes along and posts a similar solution, and he has a lot of reputation for solving issues. Fred would then give the points to Bob, purely because of his previous reputation. Now I am not saying this would happen all of the time, but it is likely to happen. And it only needs to happen once or twice for someone to think "well I never get any rep so there is no point in posting".

I would say this is where the mods need to step in and make sure the system is used fairly.

Well, I think Rep points should be given INSIDE a thread but not persist onto the member's profile, that way you can give a shoutout to a post instead of posting the lame old "+1" reply.

In other words the rep is given to a post, not to a member.

Well, I think Rep points should be given INSIDE a thread but not persist onto the member's profile, that way you can give a shoutout to a post instead of posting the lame old "+1" reply.

In other words the rep is given to a post, not to a member.

+1

We survived 9 years and 3 months without the rep system :p

QFT. So why all the concern over it now? So that new members can be assured they're getting the correct advice? There's an implication that the rest of us can't or won't speak up when somebody has offered wrong or poor advice, which simply isn't true. But what about when conflicting views lead to heated debates which slowly drift off topic and eventually into flaming? Well, isn't that what the report button is for? From where I'm sitting, this whole debate reads as though the Neowin staff have very little faith in their community, which is very sad.

Imo the rep/karma/callitwhatyoulike system is completely unnecessary. I see no value in it other than to stoke personal ego's. Just because you can implement an extra rating system doesn't mean you should.

I would say this is where the mods need to step in and make sure the system is used fairly.

Sure in an ideal world. But in the real world were some mods themselves incite abuse of the system how much trust can we have in the impartiality of mods, present company excepted ofcourse.?

Given the absolute power they have already, why add to it?What does that make better? Total control is total control. Installing whatever gradesystem that is moderated is not representative of the community, but of the mods.

And the mods have already ample methods to steer any thread any which way.

From where I'm sitting, this whole debate reads as though the Neowin staff have very little faith in their community, which is very sad.

Sorry if you feel that way, but what we've been trying to hammer out in this thread all along is that we have very little faith in the minority that abuse it, which then makes the system completely useless.

I would say this is where the mods need to step in and make sure the system is used fairly.

Surly this is going to give mods more work to do, some are really busy. So busy that when a post is deleted they don't take the time to let the poster know why its been deleted. (not aimed at anyone in particular)

Surly this is going to give mods more work to do, some are really busy. So busy that when a post is deleted they don't take the time to let the poster know why its been deleted. (not aimed at anyone in particular)

LOL ;) It was restored with a comment.

Being with Neowin for a long time now, i have seen many shifts in design, moderator attiudes and member attitudes.

This seems to be the problem Neowin has always faced however. You make ANY change on Neowin and you get the side that shout out about how great it is, that they always wanted it and are generally pleased that "their voice was heard". But then you always end up with the people who are against it, cant understand why Neowin would do such an evil thing and that their comments are NEVER taken in to consideration.

Ultimatly, i have learnt over time that nothing fundimentally changes on Neowin. Yes we get nice features added and we get a lot of free things that the staff on Neowin really dont need to do, but choose to out of sheer kindness and to make Neowin better, but the basis for Neowin never changes. It is and always has been a tech site with loads of news and other topics for its members to explore and enjoy.

To those of you moaning, i really would like to remind you that it means nothing. Any change on Neowin will ultimatly have little impact on you or your online life with Neowin. Its a small change and will result in nothing effecting you. If you dont like something, dont use it. If it ends up getting abused, then the staff will take it away. You need to remeber that the staff on here are always fair and will always back track something if it turns out to be abused or not like they hoped!

What exactly is the problem? I really don't get why this was disabled. I frequent several forums that use this feature and it's not a problem at any of them. It's actually quite useful. Sure, it's abused sometimes, but who cares? This reminds me of political correctness. Just ban everything because there are a few jackasses in the world. You do stuff like this, and you're just letting the jackasses win.

?What exactly is the problem? I really don't get why this was disabled. I frequent several forums that use this feature and it's not a problem at any of them. It's actually quite useful. Sure, it's abused sometimes, but who cares? This reminds me of political correctness. Just ban everything because there are a few jackasses in the world. You do stuff like this, and you're just letting the jackasses win.?

It was attracting more abuse than actual usefulness.

we dont want that.

It was attracting more abuse than actual usefulness.

we dont want that.

Not to mention that I would get more people replying to my post and posting "+1" without actually giving me a rep point. I didn't understand the point of that. It just shows that people would rather show that they agree with the post by posting instead of giving someone an anonymous rep point. I'm somewhat disappointed with the removal of the rep system but I understand why it was removed. It seems a lot of forums are beginning to abandon their rep systems due to constant abuse.

I don't get why it was removed (save your arguments), or why people are even arguing about it. Sure it was kind of nice to have, but it didn't really add anything to the forums.

Niiiice! A question and an answer in the same post! :cool:

This topic is now closed to further replies.
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
  • Posts

    • I'm fine with a little reasonable promotion of Edge, but the degree which they do it right now I consider extremely unreasonable. 
    • Microsoft AI boss no longer believes that AI will replace human workers by David Uzondu Mustafa Suleyman, the head of Microsoft AI, recently took back his statements concerning white-collar jobs that he gave to the Financial Times in an interview made back in February, where he claimed that AI would replace office workers within 12 to 18 months. On Monday's episode of The Verge's Decoder, Suleyman recast the technology as more like a helpmate than a tool designed to take over your job. He explained that smaller office duties will "increasingly become digitized, automated" as people generate more digital materials. During the discussion, Suleyman emphasized a "very important distinction" between "tasks" and "jobs" to clarify his previous claims. He argued that his earlier comments only referred to individual actions that people perform at their desks. Suleyman used to work for DeepMind, the research lab he co-founded in 2010 alongside Demis Hassabis and Shane Legg, before he left in 2022 to establish Inflection AI and build an empathetic digital assistant. Microsoft hired him in March 2024 to lead its newly formed "Microsoft AI" division, placing him in charge of consumer products like Copilot, Bing, and Edge. His February comments also detailed plans for Microsoft to achieve self-sufficiency with a $140 billion infrastructure budget to train frontier models, predicting that creating a customized AI will soon feel like creating a podcast or a new blog: The 41-year-old is not the only AI executive who's softened his "AI will replace you" stance. OpenAI's CEO, Sam Altman, last month used X to push back against employment panic by arguing that his startup builds tools to assist humans rather than build replacements. He had previously garnered backlash by suggesting that many modern office roles that AI might replace did not qualify as "real work" in the first place, at least when you compare desk jobs to physical, historical labor like farming.
    • Adobe Acrobat Reader DC 2026.001.21662 by Razvan Serea Adobe Acrobat Reader DC software is the free, trusted standard for viewing, printing, signing, and annotating PDFs. Its the only PDF viewer that can open and interact with all types of PDF content – including forms and multimedia. It’s connected to Adobe Document Cloud – so you can work with PDFs on computers and mobile devices. Adobe Document Cloud is a revolutionary, modern and efficient way to get work done with documents in the office, at home or on-the-go. At the heart of Document Cloud is the all-new Adobe Acrobat DC, which will take e-signatures mainstream by delivering free e-signing with every individual subscription. Document Cloud includes a set of integrated services that use a consistent online profile and personal document hub. With Adobe Document Cloud, people will be able to create, review, approve, sign and track documents whether on a desktop or mobile device. Businesses will be able to take advantage of Document Cloud for enterprise which provides enterprise-class document services that integrate into systems of record such as CRM, HCM, CLM, and CMS, adding speed, efficiency and transparency to getting business done with documents. Adobe Acrobat Reader DC new feature highlights: Work with PDFs from anywhere with the new, free Acrobat DC mobile app for Android or iOS. Select functionality is also available on Windows Phone. Use the new Fill & Sign tool in your desktop software to complete PDF forms fast with smart autofill. Download the free Adobe Fill & Sign mobile app to add the same option to your iPad or Android tablet device. Save money on ink and toner when printing from your Windows PC. Store and access files in Adobe Document Cloud with 5GB of free storage. Get instant access to recent files across desktop, web, and mobile devices with Mobile Link. Sync your Fill & Sign autofill collection across desktop, web, and iPad devices. Adobe PDF Pack premium features includes: Convert documents and images to PDF files. Use your mobile device camera to take a picture of a paper document or form and convert it to PDF. Turn PDFs into editable Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, or RTF files. Combine multiple files into a single PDF (web only). Get signatures from others with a complete e-signature service. Send, track, and confirm delivery of documents electronically instead of using fax or overnight services (tracking not available on mobile). Store and access files online with 20GB of storage. Download: Adobe Acrobat Reader DC 64-bit | 719.0 MB (Freeware) Link: Adobe Acrobat Reader DC Home Page | Release Notes | Screenshot Get alerted to all of our Software updates on Twitter at @NeowinSoftware
    • Meta will now use data from outside businesses to personalize AI responses by David Uzondu In an update that's rolling out globally (except in a handful of countries), Meta will use your data from outside businesses to personalize your AI responses and your primary feeds. Meta already utilizes your shopping activity to target ads, but the company now plans to expand this tracking to personalize other "parts of your experience" like feed algorithms and AI assistant chats. The company is replacing the two settings ("Your activity off Meta technologies" and "Activity from other businesses") that currently let you disconnect off-platform activity with a single, renamed setting called Activity from other businesses. If you don't want Meta to manipulate your feed and AI responses using your outside history, you can just turn the Activity from other businesses setting off in your account settings. This toggle resides within your Accounts Center, applying your choice to every connected profile. Turning this off will not stop companies from sending your data to Meta. The company will still collect your web interactions, but it only uses them to train products, while still accessing external accounts you connect. When The Verge spoke to Meta spokesperson, Emil Vazquez, the representative said that this update will exclude several locations at launch including the European region, the UK, Brazil, Thailand, South Africa, Turkey, South Korea, Ecuador, Nigeria, and Kenya. The new update comes at a time when the social media giant is recovering from a major PR disaster involving generative AI. Last week, there was a huge security issue on Instagram where attackers figured out a way to exploit a prompt injection vulnerability. Hackers managed to trick Meta AI into handing over account ownership (even if the victim had 2FA enabled). Some of the affected accounts include the dormant Obama White House profile, cosmetics brand Sephora, the Chief Master Sergeant of the Space Force, and security researcher Jane Manchun Wong. Internally, the company also had to scale back plans on its Model Capability Initiative (MCI), an employee-monitoring program designed to train corporate AI models by recording worker keystrokes and screen activity, after employees raised privacy concerns and complained about severe battery life drain.
    • JetBrains is working to cut false positives in RustRover 2026.2 by David Uzondu Recently, JetBrains released the fifth EAP build of its dedicated IDE, RustRover 2026.2, bringing improvements like a Run gutter icon for criterion_main! macro benchmarking and a feature that alerts you when there are unused traits in your current scope. Now, the company is out with a blog post addressing one of the "most common" complaints from users: false positives. In RustRover, a false positive occurs when the editor incorrectly highlights something as an error even though the project compiles and runs successfully. This mismatch flags a gap between the IDE's internal intelligence and the actual compiler. When the editor flashes red warnings over perfectly valid code, developers lose trust in the tool, which stalls momentum. Traditionally, RustRover runs cargo check to detect compiler errors and warnings, but it also relies on its own code analysis engine to power real-time features. To provide quick feedback, this engine parses your source code into a syntax tree while inferring types and resolving names as you type. Because this engine must work on broken, half-written code and react instantly, its logic sometimes diverges from the compiler's, producing false positives that do not exist in the compiler's eyes. JetBrains said that it has a "dedicated task force" focused specifically on identifying and fixing false positives by analyzing user reports and examining large-scale open-source projects. To speed up this process, the team built an internal system modeled after Crater, the famous Rust project that compiles and runs tests for every single crate published on crates.io. This automated pipeline compares the diagnostics from RustRover's analysis with actual compiler output to catch discrepancies before they reach users, ensuring smoother workflows. RustRover, for those who're unaware, is a dedicated IDE designed specifically for Rust developers. It's been around for a couple of years now, providing features like built-in debugging via LLDB, seamless cargo integration, advanced macro expansion, and HTML support. JetBrains distributes the app under two licensing models: a paid commercial subscription and a free option for non-commercial use.
  • Recent Achievements

    • One Year In
      Primer1st earned a badge
      One Year In
    • Experienced
      JayZJay went up a rank
      Experienced
    • Reacting Well
      Sir_Timbit earned a badge
      Reacting Well
    • Week One Done
      rubentuben8 earned a badge
      Week One Done
    • Week One Done
      ARaclen earned a badge
      Week One Done
  • Popular Contributors

    1. 1
      +primortal
      512
    2. 2
      PsYcHoKiLLa
      229
    3. 3
      Edouard
      134
    4. 4
      ATLien_0
      87
    5. 5
      Steven P.
      80
  • Tell a friend

    Love Neowin? Tell a friend!