Well, what is, is.
My observations (I used to do some assistant Sysoping on GEnie and CompuServe, in the days they were valuable
...
Initially, folks were taking the opportunity to drop some bird droppings on folks anonymously. It looked like "reputation wars" out there...
All of a sudden, tah-dah! reputation marks became transparent as to author. But from looking at them, it would appear some were giving positive comments, with negative reputation, or vice versa less frequently - so perhaps people weren't paying attention, even.
Now, it's gone...
The good: presumably, allowing reputation points was a subtle way to reward, or to modify negative posters' behavior. Limiting the number of reputation points you gave meant you had to be thoughtful, and not blast a bunch of folks, or inflate reputation of those you agreed with.
The bad: it brought another factor into the interpersonal relations here, such as they are, and I suspect gave lots more unnecessary c**p to the moderators to deal with when folks began writing about or protesting unwanted reps. Not to mention we all have ideas of what changes we want - more work for the volunteer moderators.
Ah, well, we know no good deed goes unpunished...
It may be a good thing this feature is gone - less hassle and work for moderators - who I know from experience are very busy already - and, besides, if we hang around the boards a while, we know who's who... hotheds vs. levelheads, flamers vs. defusers, etc. and if it matters enough, we can give feedback in public with our bald faces hanging out so we can't hide.
Only recommendation I can make it so
communicate with the membership when big or significant changes are to occur (or don't, as in the case of the balky updates not long ago.) I recommend to my clients - corporations or government entities -that one way to partially mitigate perceived negative effects of change is to be sure to
communicate - much more than when things are going right. Then people feel included, rather than being surprised.
Good job, folks! ^