Who would of thought... given all the Evangelists here!!

I consider it an honor to be dinged...

I mean, IJAFIBB, who the f* cares?

If one never gets dinged, then one couldn't possibly be posting anything of much content.

Can I buy 1000 reputation points for 10,000 UA miles?

If we cannot see what reputation comments we have and who posted them, what good are they????????????????????????

If I have great positive feedback, will you buy from me? (Sorry, this is Flyertalk, not EBAY)

Ebay has this function also. They call it "hidden feedback".
Officially and theoretically, it means 'I don't care what people think'.
In practice it is generally accepted to mean 'less than zero' (= bad rep.).

But at ebay, there are commercial concerns about hiding negative feedback. Here, on a non-commercial site, there are no such concerns.

But that's beside the point, that it's a feature which can be divisive, and there's no accountability for negative feedback.

I don't care - whatever Randy wants to do - we can always set up another conga line...

Reputation votes and comments should be public or restricted to positive statements. There is another function to identify bad posts.

Likely in the long run we would be better off without the function. Where it can be useful in the trading areas, unless the software allows its use to be restricted, I'd vote (if I had one!) to turn it off.

And I still wish you'd add a spell checker. My work computer will not work with add-on and my browsers do not check spelling.

Maybe in the long run, having the "distinguished road" "shameless behavior" etc. thing turned off (as it is now) but allowing the display of the little green gems (1,2,3, etc.) will work? IMHO, It would still make it possible for a newbie to make some kind of determination of who is generally regarded as "knowing what they are talking about" without creating undue hostility, etc?

That's my current take on things, I'm still handing out positive "points" to those who I regard as FT's most informative and/or interesting posters and have received same-- the "dings" I've received I wear as a badge of honor . Including the fact that one can (and many have) choose to turn off their display of "green gems" and with the elimination of the rather dumb, software-generated, non sequitur comments that appeared based on one's point rating, I think I like the way things function now and think it adds to FT overall.

Hear, hear.
I got a negative after posting a few comments stating my belief that Christ is God. I said nothing combattive. Rather, I didn't enter into a full point-by-point discussion for personal reasons.

I just worry that the reputation points could end up being a popularity contest for whatever is the prevailing opinion on a particular subject.

Still, bring 'em on. I'd just love to know who was making them.

I agree with you Rita. I have had a few negative comments, one for saying I got accepted into Divinity School, another for posting in this forum and a third one for asking people how long they love their ex's after they part... No idea who anyone was and except for the comment get a life , nothing else mentioned. For now I have reputation turned off.

One thing worth noting-- and it has been explained, but it took a while for me to understand it; if you see a "ding" on your "My FlyerTalk" page and it has a grey box next to it (as opposed to red)-- it doesn't count against your total number of points. In other words, you gotta' have good reputation to make any impact whatsoever on someone else's rep.. I have found that, especially recently, my received "dings" are not red but grey, probably from people who have very few points-- either 'cause they are new, or...

. . . . . . .

Wont let me enter just 1 character to show no message.

Now this is bizarre. I have hardly been posting, literally nothing at all yet my reputation points have been decreasing daily. I checked the comments / dings by others and they are balanced so how does this work?

I think I am better off keeping it turned off.

I got dinged for a Happy Easter thread

Not that I care, I just think it is silly as heck