[KaVir]

That sounds like a decent way to avoid "rep wars".

Personally I've found the positive rep thing to be quite useful, as it lets me indicate to someone that I agree with their points or found their post useful, without cluttering up the thread with "me too" posts.

I don't consider the reputation rating itself to be of much value, as it could easily be "gamed", but I like reading the private comments people leave.

[Aeran]

I think the rep should be anonymous. Now it is "give a bad rep away - get a bad rep back". With positive rep people become "fanboys" handing out rep just because they know the target will know who gave them the rep.

[Milawe]

If it's just positive rep, maybe it would be okay for it to be anonymous. That way you don't have "rep trading", too, though, I honestly don't think people are doing that now. It might be good just to prevent it in the first place.

[Valg]

Agreed on both of these counts. Specifically, knowing why people found your posts helpful is nice. I try to remember to always fill in the 'Reason' field when I'm leaving feedback, and I'd encourage others to do the same.

Also, it's occasionally difficult to distinguish between "everyone agrees with my post" and "no one has any opinion of my post", since most people don't like leaving "me too".

[Valg]

Agreed. Maybe we can just cross that bridge when we come to it. So far I haven't seen anything i'd consider 'abuse', I have gotten useful feedback, and if someone no one's ever heard of suddenly has a huge positive rep, we can deal with those on a case-by-case basis.

I'd vote for "Status quo-- Lasher has bigger fish to fry".

[Threshold]

I'd say remove something with potential abuse BEFORE it gets abused and creates flamewars.

It adds absolutely nothing. The idea of people giving rep for agreeing with someone's points is just gruesome. Ugh. That smacks of being given a treat and told "good doggie." If rep is going to be used for agreeing or disgareeing with someone's points, that's even worse than just repping based on good/bad behavior.

This is a disaster waiting to happen. Rip the cancer out before it metastasizes.

[Milawe]

ROFL. While the image you generate is quite dramatic, don't you think it goes a little bit far?

Positive rep doesn't really "give" you anything. I don't even know what the ranks are and who is above or below anyone else. They're kind of just something I think might make people pause and think about what they post, but they're also extremely easy to ignore. That is a GOOD thing, imo!

[Newworlds]

I can't completely understand why, but for some reason I agree with this. I just can't help but to think friends will rep friends, enemies will anti-rep enemies and so on. Perhaps I'm jaded from administrating cheaters for years, perhaps I have little faith in self regulation.

[Threshold]

Yeah, I have zero faith in systems like this unless they have an enormous amount of checks and balances. There also has to be an overpoweringly valuable reason for the system in the first place, to justify all the headaches.

We have an elaborate system on Threshold where you can give positive or negative reports about someone's RP. The reports people write up get randomly peer reviewed by other players (with all character names removed), and for a report to become "valid", a preponderance of people who read it have to agree in the validity of the report. And at least this system has value, since it helps reward good RP on an RP required game. In other words, it directly relates to the purpose of the game. The purpose of this forum is not to prove who is a good poster or not.

So the reputation system serves no real, significant positive purpose and just creates major opportunities for abuse, clique formation, favoritism, and petty squabbles. That is a recipe for disaster.

[Valg]

Given that the consequences of the worst-case scenario "disaster" is that "someone will have a larger-than-usual number in a field with no impact", I think you're being overdramatic there.

I just like it as a quick feedback system that doesn't trigger the pop-up notification I have for PMs. (As a moderator, I prefer to know ASAP if someone is PMing me, since most of my PMs have to do with moderation.) It's useful to the recipient, and everyone seems to know that the number isn't a reflection of status or authority or whatever.