How to run a reputation system in the real world
 

For what its work, you might want to look at the moderation system used by slashdot.org this system works very nicely in an environement with a lot of people who have not even the remotest interest in being nice to each other. most of the obvious abuses of reputation are handled by their metamoderation system which basicly lets people comment on the comments. So if you ding someone out of pure spite and the metamoderator says so then you lose karma (their name for reputation). Since all the comments/moderation is anonymous the metamoderators can't pick on people they don't like since they don't know who make the moderation in the first place.

'How to run a reputation system in the real world'

I have a simpler system. Judge people's "reputation" based solely on their posted comments and input on FT.

Works perfectly well for me. :D

Some have 5 green stars on my system, and some have 5 red ones. All hard won. ;)

I'm with oz. A nice idea, in theory, that turned into a real bad idea, in practice.

Coupon Connection has policed it's own for many a year with success. Even if we could/would just enable this feature in that forum, I am not sure it's necessary and chances are someone can find a way to use it to other's benefit/detriment.

It's a shame that new visitors to FT have no viable way to determine which posters offer valuable and accurate advice and which ones do not. There are several multi-thousand post members who regularly post incorrect advice on the boards I read and I'm all in favor of a system that makes it much easier for our new members to get useful information from FT.

Note that there is the new rate-a-thread feature, as opposed to a personal rep feature. The advantage to a rate-a-thread rating is that you can rate of thread based upon the quality of the advice therein. And since often, popular topics are addressed within many different threads, the best threads will survive and grow, whereas the "defective" threads will fall in the queue.