WHO determines what abuse is? Surely you can't decide for another person whether or not they should agree with your posts?

Having Randy invest time in investigating childish jabs as someones useless online "reputation" is ludicrous. The system either works, or it doesn't, and I've heard the same people claim both things now several times...

Randy would have to investigate 100's of "dings", ask the user why he/she did it, listen to 100's of claims by people on how nasty the other person is, read loads of links to stuff in the past and then make a decision? That's a fulltime job handling something that can be solved by simply turning off an option in your control panel.

The system is about reputation. There are plenty of people on FT I don't like, and wouldn't award a positive point if they paid me to do it, but I don't think leaving silly anonymous points will be the solution to my feelings about them.

Punki, if the system bothers you this much then follow Glens wise advice, turn it off. Let the kiddies play around with your reputation as much as they want, not having it visable will stop them in a day. Add them to your ignore list and get on with life, worrying about a bunch of juvenile kiddies wastes energy that can be spent on much nicer things.

Removing someones privaleges because they clicked on your little scales is an insane idea, the reputation serves no purpose and doesn't affect you in real life. When you log out of FT people and head to the grocery store the people there won't see a "shameless grey" box over your head.

FT reputation won't get you into an elite line, an airline lounge and it won't get you upgraded...