Folks. Please get a grip.

Either act like an attention seeking 14 year old, and seek shamelessly to amass and flout these silly and meaningless points, or turn off the option, or listen to Randy. The choice is surely yours.

Randy Petersen
Founding Member

Join Date: May 1998
Location: Colorado Springs, CO
Posts: 2,293

I'll save you all the trouble....

while trying to isolate the servers performance for a better FT experience for you all i came upon this thread. Really what we had in mind, in case you haven't come across it, the reputation is designed only for The Coupon Connection forum to help members who may find themselves engaged in a trade or exchange with another member they don't know. You may or may not appreciate this but just in case, I'm going to have to take this thread down.

One thing about reputations - no rating in the world will likely change the reputation you earn by the quality of the posts you start... and contribute to.

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Thank you. No offense intended, and your good intentions noted and appreciated, but we have seen this post by Mr Petersen three times now. It doesn't answer the questions/opinions posted in this thread, and it hasn't stopped the point parade, nor the controversy. It was about the 'point conga', and why he closed it. No one is questioning his decision on that.
But as long as people can use this feature outside the CC, they (we?) will use it, with mostly harmless but meaningless results.
So far, the result has been a broad spectrum of experiences, from happy point collectors and point philanthropists , (I got another anonymous post today related to this thread!) to angry retaliation and paranoid suspicion. None of which has anything to do with the CC. Until the system is restricted to the CC, and has user accountability, it ain't nuthin' but a point party y'all.

Just to be clear-- the feedback that has a grey box next to it doesn't have to be from newbies. People who's point total is low-- for whatever reason-- cannot impact your over-all "reputation" either, resulting in the grey box and no change in your total. As has been pointed out before, the more points someone has the greater the "impact" of them giving you feedback will be. i.e. one person may give you feedback that will add 6 points to your total while someone else's feedback could give many more points than that. It's a bit complicated, but it is designed to make sure new or "low point" old members can't impact your total equally. Also, "approvals" count much more than "disapprovals."

BTW, one thing I just noticed. The little "gems" that appear next to your post-count in posts; there is the dark grey "member has disabled reputation" gem-- which a lot of people have and then there is a light grey "gem"-- which appears to mean that the member's point total is very low (or even negative) but that they haven't disabled reputation feature (yet ) The more I see the system (not including the comments,) the more I like it...

Thank's for the clarification. I should have said members who are new or don't have much FT juice.

One of the reasons I personally see the system "working" over the long haul is that as time goes on, a higher and higher % of the anonymous, pot-shot non sequitur "dings" I've gotten have been from "grey boxers"-- folks who have, IMHO, probably garnered a low point total through their own actions and as a result, can't impact anyone else's "reputation." I haven't gotten a "red" in a while-- just greens and an equal number of "greys" and as a result, my point total has steadily risen, despite having a dedicated cadre of evil stalkers.

So, if one takes the high road and gives "approvals" from time to time to those who really do contribute here, the result will be that those people with a resultant high point total can pass it on and easily make up for a few random, hateful dings from the "grey boxers."

It goes without saying that heavy, partisan participation in Omni will cause all sorts of deviations from the above-- that's a given, I think, as the spite levels build over time-- as opposed to "real" FT where grudges, hopefully, fade a bit over time.

All this, FWIW...

I must say the negatives really hammer your rating. Got my first one for mispelling the name of the national Australian airline ( anonymous, of course, so I can't go write SecState and demand we pull out of ANZUS ) and even with a positive after it, I dropped five full points.

But like most, I don't keep track. If newcommers want to automatically discount my information should I ever drop to 0, well maybe someone still in the green can copy and paste it into a reply.

First, I want to say that I really believe that this reputation thing is making most posts more civil, which is a good thing.

Second, I am noticing some status accumulation by some members, just like some of the ridiculous post counts, which are also meaningless.

Third, since new members really can�t effect reputation of established members if I understand the reputation feature, then I think new members are at a real disadvantage when it comes to being candid when posting. While you wouldn�t want to get into a reputation �gunfight� with a real established member, it would be easy to just crucify a new member and their opinion and reputation hits would be non-effective against you.

Just some observations of reputation so far.

I agree with dallasflyer that people are making a greater effort at civility and helpfulness since the board came back up. I attribute this to reputation points. This is a very good thing.

I wonder, however, if reputation points that can be awarded by an individual should be capped at some arbitrary amount. I went to the FAQ on reputation points, and discovered that a person gets one point per year on FT, one point per 1000 points, and one point per little green box of reputation points. This means if I could persuade Doc to give me reputation points - and I use his handle as an example since he is rarely posting, and thus not into the reputation game - he could give a 50 point swing. There are a handful of people who can make 20 point swings or greater.

Personally, I would suggest that the maximum points that any individual can bestow would be 10. This prevents a handful of people from having the ability to dominate the reputation process.

I'm not sure but I think it IS capped at 15 or so.

Nope.

Better find yourself a clique made up of a bunch of old-timers.

What a great idea. Anyone want to join?

Not if you'll actually let me in, I don't.

Ok, I won't let you in, but will you join mine?

The no-anonplz club has been created. Where do I send the invitation?

FewMiles..