Change to Rep System

Yeah, tally up all the whining of the trolling repwar lawyerball douche canoes, then do the opposite of what they want.

 

I don't want my rep reset. I've been accumulating it for years and I'm a greedy bitch when it comes to those green pips. You can get rid of negging but I don't want you touching my collection of meaningless greens squares.
The squares themselves say I have popped many rep cherries! I don't want to have to re-pop them all!

 

sucky. i liked my little green squares. why can't we just leave rep alone?

 

Moving this here for the discussion as the other thread will catch fire soon.....

Then just ban neg reps in all rooms except red and gray.

And yet you are about to institute a rule that eliminates any ability to give neg reps.

So I'm not seeing the difference between telling people not to neg rep in non-red/gray rooms and changing the board programing to prevent people from giving neg reps in those rooms.

In both cases you're preventing "people who aren't Mighty Repwarriors" from disagreeing in those rooms.

And it wouldn't be a pain in the ass to enforce.

We've got a whole bunch of snitches on this board who will gladly rush to the report post button to say, "Kill him with fire, please" in response to a neg rep in those rooms.

At that point you mods check it out and issue a FULL warning and please train your mods so they can't play the whole "well maybe he didn't know the rules so I gave him a friendly" bullshit games.

 

I hate this plan. Repwhine threads generate a lot of the drama and traffic to this site. Wordforge would be a less fun place if this happened. Trolling is a time honored tradition here and something that sets us apart from the other forums. You vanilla up the Red Room, and why would I spend time here instead of another more active forum?

As for neg reps in other forums, if it becomes that much of a problem, why not just ban neg reps in other forums beside the Red and Grey rooms?

This proposal is a pussification of Wordforge.

 

I say 6 of one, half a dozen the other. We here to post, debate and have fun.

 

ahhhhhhhhh......

Well I still disagree.

 

Spoken like a true chaos junkie.

I find "drama", boring, but that's me.

 

I completely disagree.

At this point, rep is good for little more than drama and trolling. And the drama doesn't bring traffic to the site, it keeps people away from the site. We get virtually no new members, and I'd be embarrassed to bring people here as prospective new members. There's nothing to stop you from trolling without neg rep being involved.

Right now, WF is about two steps away from being a board that's about nothing but itself (and how awful Obama is). I applaud anything that moves us away from that.

 

One minor caveat: negreps are good for little more than drama and trolling. Even with the current system, rep is a fun way of getting a score. It makes Wordforge a kind of game, as well as a debate forum. Sure, the "game" is no more important than any other game, but games are fun.

The proposed system changes the nature of the game from a contest to a race. Instead of being able to prevent others from getting a higher score by blocking them (the way football, basketball, baseball and other such games are played), it is merely a question of scoring as many points as you can on your own and trying to have more than others. People who are more of a "gladiator" mentality prefer the first type of game, people who are more "achievement" oriented prefer the second. It is worth noting that there are significantly more spectators for contest-type games than for race-type games, many people obviously prefer the first type. There is something fulfilling to many people about being able to "hurt" someone, that they don't get simply by out-performing others.

There is no good way to test this, but I tend to agree. If "traffic" just means "number of hits" (i.e., pages loaded) then maybe it brings "traffic." But if "traffic" means "number of interesting posters and interesting posts" (and that seems to me to be a more meaningful way of using the term), then you are probaly correct.

That will change if Obama loses the election. Then it will be about how awful Romney is...

 

Once the change is complete, I'd suggest sending a mass e-mail to the membership detailing what was done, and how it'll effect Wordforge in the future.

We've had some decent (and not so decent) people leave over the years because rep trolling turned them off. It might be nice to have some of them back.

 

The only thing more politically correct than doctoring one's objections to avoid negrep is doing away with negrep in order to avoid objections.

Political correctness sucks.

And I sure as hell don't understand why you'd have to wipe everyone out to do it. This has "equality" written all over it.

 

I'm pretty sure any major change reset to the rep system (in this case, resetting the value of rep given) causes the scores to be reset. It's my understanding that the same thing that happened when the rep system was changed to the way it is now, years ago.

 

I disagree. The vast, VAST majority of people using rep is to give approval or disapproval to posts that they agree or disagree with. Out of all the people here that use rep, I would say a very small percentage of people use it for drama or trolling.

I would think that the no-holds-barred arguments, flaming, trolling etc. in the actual posts on this forum do that much more effectively without needing a minus score on a usercp

You say you'd be embarrassed to bring people here, yet in the next sentence, you say there's nothing stopping you from trolling without neg rep being involved. It seems these negative points somehow are quite important and would bring in new members if they were eliminated?

And I doubt moving to a new rep system would solve any of that.



P.S. Lanz, don't let the rep whiners have their way.

 

And nothing about the new system will alter that one iota.

 

What a coincidence. I noticed you neg bombing a new member.

But I'm sure you're deeply concerned about new membership.

 

Awesome. Why don't we send them a batch of cookies and a gift card too?

Anyone who is so thin-skinned they were run off by rep doesn't need to be here and if they do, they sure as hell don't need to be in the Red Room.

Fuck that.

 

Some of us think the Red Room should be a place for "discussion of sensitive issues, philosophy, politics, religion, and often bizarre combinations of all four," not a race to the bottom to see who has the "thickest skin."

 

Honestly, I think this is changing something for the sake of changing it. I don't think it's needed, Lanz.

 

It's only changing because of a few whiners and the mods who don't like Sokar and a couple of others.

 

I quite like Sokar actually...he's a great guy when the act's turned off.

 

You don't pay the bills.

 

The proposed changes seem reasonable, although I don't particularly care one way or another.

I don't agree that rep wars (ie, spam) are an important part of this site's traffic.

 

Considering that NOTHING will change, besides not being able to give - points, it does seem like a whole lot of points-based rep whine.

Like really, the enjoyment of the entire site is based off numbers in the usercp.

Not saying that it ain't, for me, but there are people who would deny this is important, then be the ones to whine and complain the hardest to try and get it changed.

The hypocrisy is unbelievable.

 

Not to worry. We've got the response ready to go if it goes through.

 

This new rep thing sure smells a lot like the "everybody gets a trophy" mentality that most people seem to find so distasteful.

But, it doesn't really matter much to me one way or another. Do it if you want.

 

So then why Post #45?

It's actually quite predictable.

 

That is not the case, at least not here. I don't remember whether or not it was the case last time, as it was quite a while ago.

 

And also, you guys sure you want cases like THIS:
http://www.wordforge.net/showthread.php?t=93116
running loose without being able to give minuses?

Careful what you wish for.