Hey G33ks,So I'm active on a certain forum, of which the repping system is just broken. I made a post about that, and a lot of them say that it works perfectly and that I'm overreacting. So I decided to explain what is going on. Now, this does not apply to some forums. I've seen plenty of forums who implemented reputation properly. This is specifically aimed at the forums that didn't.

The main problem

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First of all, the "pay2rep" system. The forum has a small upkeep fee (according to the "donation goals" post that I saw last, it was about 80 euros a month, which is about 40 euro's below my upkeep cost). So I do understand that the forum needs donations in order to keep paying the upkeep. I completely understand that. However, the main "selling" point of that "donators" rank, is the fact that you can give people +3 or -3 (and of course +2/-2, +1/-1 and +0/-0 a.k.a neutral). This creates a bit of a problem. Because, it's the only limit you have, just the numbers you can give to a specific person. However, this also means that the repping system is rather broken, and giving somebody reputation, or take reputation (which should be a combination of effort, loyalty and of course, just how nice somebody is) can be easily "abused". Somebody can give somebody else rep for literally no reason. Do you want to screw-over somebodies reputation because you are bored? go ahead Do you want to gang up on people to just make them go in the red? go ahead Somebody doesn't suit your ethnicity, religion, expected skill level etc? go aheadAs you can see, you can literally take others reputation, for which they have worked very hard, putting a lot of effort in their content and helping out others, by just donating. Showing that capitalism is probably the main cause of this problem in the first place.

But aren't there any rules, limitations or regulations for the reputations you give or take?

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As I've already said, the only limitation is that you can give or take a maximum of three reputation points to a specific person, And again, there are NO rules set on giving or taking reputation. You can (like I already said) literally take somebodies rep (who the person probably worked for quite hard), just because you feel like it. This is not how repping should work.

Why put a value to reputation in the first place?

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For me, and lots of other people, we want to become big in this world, get a good reputation, and lots of people knowing our name. Getting a high reputation score for that certainly helps with it, and people taking reputation makes us look worse. It's not the fact that somebody takes rep from me that pisses me off, it's the fact that people just take reputation (making me look worse) for their entertainment values.Yes, some people say "reputation means nothing", but for some people, like me, it's a sign of how much effort I've put into my work, and how much people are grateful for that effort. Taking those points away from me that I worked hard for, just for your fun?

So how are you so sure that it's a useless/broken system?

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As you may or may now know, I developed MaidBot. She gained the ability to let people give and take other people's reputation. (with her own database) After literally a few days (the forum that got me in this post in the first place has a user base nowhere near the user base of BustaBit), I got complaints about the reputation system being useless due to no limitations. Yes, MaidBot used to (and still, does because I no longer maintain her) have *nearly* the same flaw. People could literally give and take other people their reputation for no reason. MartinBot on the other hand (which pretty much got me started on adding reputation to MaidBot when it went down), had a system build in that would limit reputation. You got one reputation point for every X games played (I think it was like 100 or 1000 games for 1 "credit"???). This made people have to think a tad bit more on who they give their reputation points to. MartinBot also had a neat little thing which caused people to be able to abuse it even less: People under -X could NOT take reputation.This learned me that this flaw pretty much makes the whole reputation system useless. Because people can just take reputation because they feel like it's fun to do. Making the whole "reputation" more of a "who likes me" thing rather than a "reputation" thing.

The Simple solution to the problem

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The solution to the problem is (as shown by MartinBot) rather simple: Limit the reputation somebody can give based on the post, not the donation status. and if needed, disable taking reputation for people who come below a negative reputation. Or atleast put some rules on the, and try to enforce them.

Are you leaving the forum?

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Simply said: I'll wait out the future.I really like the community on that specific forum in general, however, the amount of ignorance on there makes it less worth my time. For now, I won't leave the forum, however, I'll probably be less active there. You know me, I rather not stick around with people who don't think for themselves too much ;)So that's it for now :) I hope you learned a valuable lesson! If there is any question left, feel free to post them below! *I feel like I forgot to mention something*G33k Out