Petition to Reconsider Rep

Most of the people who have been negged into the red (or otherwise asked to be turned full red) I do not consider a douchebag. Some of them are an annoyance, but I tend not to take things so personally as you and others do.

It's all subjective, just like the notion that those who negrepped deserve it every single time.

 

Wow, you're really invested in this whole thing huh? You've kinda gone off the deep-end if you've started trolling/flaming people in the Help Desk. Take a deep breath, it's not the end of the world. You're only discrediting yourself and your cause.

 

Timmy disagrees: I saw them as meaningless, but I'd rather not deal with the fallout of those who put more meaning into them. People took that shit waaay too personally.

So? Is it really your concern if someone else put more meaning into it? It's not our responsibility to make sure other people's feelings aren't getting hurt; what is our responsibility is to act civilly. There is a difference, even if we do act like 'tards by trolling, flaming and yes, negging each other.

 

Yeah, that happened to me at TK a couple of times, and I had Darkening following me around for a few weeks posting "Anna Yolei Is On Your Ignore List" after everything I posted.

Yanno how that affect my life?

 

I agree, but there were many times rep wars (or perceived rep wars) would seep into peoples' posts and derail otherwise interesting threads. That's downside of nearly 3/4 of the board's posts being in the Red Room. I've been a long time advocate of doing away with rep entirely because it disrupts both threads and board functionality (from a technical perspective, the administration has admitted to this much). And it causes waaaay too much unnecessary drama (see: this thread) and turns people off to this board.

 

It's obvious by now that someone's feelings are going to be hurt regardless of what's done. There is no solution that pleases everyone.

 

I call bullshit -- threads derail themselves quite well with or without karma/rep. I could easily pick a thread in the red room at random and it'll either be political circle jerking and cum-flinging at each other or it'll be whoever's feuding with Garamet at the given moment.

As for rep related shenanigans, you've got instances like where actormike's quipping some stupid parody of a lame conservative sound byte (usually from one us WF's) but does it beyond the point of being funny and is beating the dead horse's skeleton so someone will start negging him... which only encourages him. In this case, this somewhat balanced out because of the campaign to keep him in the green, and he eventually tired of his troll to get negged in the first place.

Or K1A, where one - ONE - neg in genuine disagreement or to call him out on assholery sends him into a frothing rep war... which eventually balances out with him getting a dose of his own medicine and running off the board. Again, this balanced out -- Kirk's gone. Tasvir's gone.

Yet, outside of rep call out threads (repwhine threads, if you prefer), I haven't seen any instances where rep has derailed threads. I don't even see this at Troll Kingdom, where rep is used as a weapon even by the admins. Even in the days of the Dual Liberation Army, where people like Gagh could bury someone with a healthy rep score down to the red in a few bombs, it didn't derail threads so much as generate threads. There is a difference.

One last thing, I'm surprised that you, of all people, are concerned about the 'drama' of this all. You're as much of a troll as any of us. You have been since, what, 2003 when I met you.

 

Of course there will be thread derails at random, there's not much that can stop that. But why not eliminate an abused feature which has actually contributed to thread derails and decreased quality of the board?

It all depends on your perspective. I've found that more people view someone as a troll or douche when they disagree with them on multiple issues, and those disagreements turn into arguments across multiple threads. Certainly I've fallen victim to that trap on several occasions. I'm not exactly sure you're making a strong case for rep in this example. Even assuming actormike were trolling, a neg rep campaign had no effect on his trolling. That leads me to believe he either wasn't trolling, doesn't give a fuck about rep, or both. The argument of the pro-reppers falls short because the reputation system doesn't actually provide a method of discouraging disliked posters from posting.

Those were the posters I actually had in mind when I was making the comments about not wanting to neg rep someone because the fallout wouldn't be worth it. Then again, if it hadn't been for rep, I wonder how long they would have stuck around, or if they would have been quite as smug.

Generating ultimately worthless threads that drag the board down as a whole and losing us members.

What can I say? Nine years is a long time and people change. Even just four or five years ago I might have sided with the "leave it as is" crowd as a matter of being anti-establishment like everyone else. The drama I used to engage in became tiresome and one of the reasons I've taken a few extended absences from this place. I'd much rather this place have many more discussions and debates rather than all out battles where everyone is on the defensive and become so staunchly attached to their opinion that they aren't willing to concede an inch.

I won't deny giving up trolling though, it flares up from time to time (see: the last remnants of my sig).

 

No, you don't get it. What I'm saying is that if the game is getting to you that badly then you need to stop playing. I honestly don't care if someone decides to get butthurt and leave. They aren't going to be very productive or interesting if rep is what consumes them anyway.

 

Which is why you're not getting it at all. It's not a game for you to take and harass people with, driving them from the board. My initial statement was correct. You're taking the "If you don't like it, man up or get the fuck out" approach, which is a wonderful way to bring in new people.

This means way more to you guys than you're letting on. It's more than a game to some of you. For some of you, it's about establishing dominance.

 

It would please everyone if you killed yourself.

Go ahead. Warn me for that cunt.

 

No one is driving anyone from the board if someone elects to take their ball and go home

And what you don't seem to realize is just how little I care if some shrinking violet doesn't want to play with the rest of us misfits in the Red Room. To be frank, it isn't really the place for them if that kind of thing would deter them.

Oh please. The only ones it means that much to are the ones whining about how mean it is that someone can have points taken away from their karma score. I hate to break it to you, but this isn't the only board in the internet with some kind of a karma score - it actually comes standard on SMF boards. It's all part of the experience, and frankly this argument that it might scare some people away isn't going to get you anywhere.

 

So when the board is finally down to a handful of people, and Sokar, bitching back and forth, rep warring one another day in and day out, you'll have got what you wanted.

Alright.

 

Lock this thread, and set all the complainers to maximum red.

If they complain, they're liars about rep meaning nothing.

 

Sokar is set to max red. He can't repwar with anybody. As for actormike, he stirred it up, got repwarred, created the controversy he was looking for with rep being neutered, and now he hasn't posted in a week. Not that anybody with half a brain thinks he was here for any serious discussion.

It may be the best troll in the history of Wordforge. Congratulations, Lanz. You fell for it.

 

Oh, and when he was above green, guess what he did?

 

He helped us all rep war against you!

 

Done.

Stop this shit in the Help Desk! And that goes for all of you. Discuss this civilly or don't discuss it at all in here.

 

Apparently Rep is too tied up in some people's existence for them to discuss it civilly. It is just too much of an emotional hot button issue for them.

 

I always thought it was supposed to be like "Whose Line Is It Anyways?"



Yet it seems to matter quite a bit.

 

People tend not to stick around where there's one small clique-y group that dominates the largest part of the board. The Red Room gets the vast majority of WF's traffic.

 

Yes, it does, especially to the people who whine about how mean it is, or the people who whine about how it doesn't matter while still trying to change it.

And yet there are other forums here.

 

Oh, sure, but let's look at the activity in comparison to the Red Room:

 

Apparently, I'm so feared and despised, and so stupid, yet so clever, that I tricked Lanz into turning negrep off by doing absolutely nothing at all, then punked out in the night when my master plan (of doing nothing) unveiled as well as Obama taking out Bin Laden.

You know, $corp made pretty much the exact same accusation, and when I challenged him to prove it, he in turn challenged me to a fight. I know you're pretty old and all, but if rep is so important to you, and it obviously is, I'm sure you'll man up and get the gloves out.

So I'll go back to pulling Lanz's strings, and you pull on your Confederate "uniform" and meet me in the WordForge parking lot.

 

^ Trolling!

 

Preemptive victimhood. I blame the War on Christmas.

 

And yet...here you are.

 

So? That doesn't change anything I've said. If anything it serves to counter the argument that rep has been keeping people away.

Yeah, because rep matters, like I've been arguing all along. Oh, I'm worry, were you trying to make some kind of a point?

 

I'd think the point would be obvious. I mean, you're basically arguing that it's unfair for the administration to take away the ability of people to engage in rep war because rep matters, yet it's fair for individuals or groups of individuals to do the same thing. You can't have it both ways, either rep matters, and it shouldn't be something that can be taken away, or it doesn't.