How Does Rep Work?

[Unreliable]

Rep is kind of a silly mechanic. How it works is that anyone who pays for the game (believe F2P can not rep) can give positive rep based upon a percentage of their own rep. They can do this once a week (I think) for the same poster and can do it a few times in a day. If you have lots of rep (1750 I believe) you can also hand out negative rep, also as a percentage of your total rep. This means that both positive rep and negative rep while anonymous can generally be guessed at who is giving it to you. For example, very few have such massive rep bars to hit you for 50+ negative/positive rep. If one of those few people posts in the thread either supportive or in the contrary to your position it's fairly obvious who gave the rep out.

Rep actually does very little. If someone gets a very high negative rep total I have heard that their posts are approved before they are posted, much like someone who accumulates infractions. Incredibly stubborn or angry poster generally are the only ones to get this much negative reputation.

Some little hints about rep.

*You can turn off your reputation from displaying. Posters with net negative rep often do this, but they are certainly not the only ones. This however does not prevent people from still giving you positive or negative reputation.
*Meaningful and intelligent posting often does not result in a positive reputation. In fact, if the subject matter ruffles anyones feathers it could very result in negative reputation.
*The best ways to gain positive reputation are posting funny pictures and one liners.
*The reputation system is all about promoting group think. Go with the crowd and you get positive reinforcement go against it and you get negative reinforcement.
*You can see how much reputation you have under the user CP tab.

would have given you +1 but no funny pics or clever puns, sorry.

[Cyr]

would have given you +1 but no funny pics or clever puns, sorry.

No worries your tiny rep bar would hardly move mine anyways

Edit: I guess that qualifies as a clever pun

[Tarrant]

Hi Yiren,

Aside from what everyone here has said (and thanks, +1 to all of you ), when you reach a certain threshold of negative reputation, your posts become automatically moderated until Tolero or myself approve them. This is to allow the community to exercise a degree of self-moderation, and to let you all catch anyone constantly posting inappropriate things (it has happened before) if we can't get there soon enough.

[Memnir]

when you reach a certain threshold of negative reputation, your posts become automatically moderated until Tolero or myself approve them.

Just for clarification, what is that threshold, exactly? In terms of red-boxes, what is the magic-number for insta-moderation.
I ask only because I've seen some people keep posting at will with a lot of red boxes by their name - at least four.


As a form of Citizen's Arrest, it does not seem to work very well. Or rather, as well as it does in any other fashion...

[Tarrant]

Just for clarification, what is that threshold, exactly? In terms of red-boxes, what is the magic-number for insta-moderation.
I ask only because I've seen some people keep posting at will with a lot of red boxes by their name - at least four.


As a form of Citizen's Arrest, it does not seem to work very well. Or rather, as well as it does in any other fashion...

We don't give out the magic-number, but there was a time in the past when the insta-moderation was a fickle mistress and didn't succumb to our commands. It behaves much better now.

[Cyr]

We don't give out the magic-number, but there was a time in the past when the insta-moderation was a fickle mistress and didn't succumb to our commands. It behaves much better now.

What purpose does keeping this information secret serve?

[flynnjsw]

What purpose does keeping this information secret serve?

Keeps things "Dark and Mysterious"????lol

Oh Big Brother Where art Thou...

[Tarrant]

What purpose does keeping this information secret serve?

Several purposes. One is that it allows us the opportunity to adjust the threshold based on what we feel is appropriate. For example, it was easier to land in insta-moderation when only a few people could give out negative reputation as opposed to currently.

[Drakos]

What purpose does keeping this information secret serve?

Personally I'd say it serves to try and prevent people from trying to abuse it in reverse. Purposly being abarsive to get the neg rep but then backing off when they are getting close to insta-moderated status.

[Memnir]

We don't give out the magic-number, but there was a time in the past when the insta-moderation was a fickle mistress and didn't succumb to our commands. It behaves much better now.

Fair enough - but I hope it was a recent adjustment, because some of the instances I'm talking about were not too long ago.


And while I have your ear, Evil One - the responses in this thread should illustrate that the public perception of the Rep System is pretty bad, and needs some repair. Neg Rep griefing is still an issue, and is perhaps the biggest problem with the way the system currently functions.

If Turbine cannot/will not give us the name of the person who gave us the Neg Rep, can it at least be looked into if each time Neg Rep is given, it has to be looked into by a Mod? Because I'd lay odds that 75% or more of the Neg Rep given is for spiteful or petty reasons - and not ones by which the system intends.

Faith needs to be put back into the system - because right now there is precious little to be had.

[Tarrant]

Fair enough - but I hope it was a recent adjustment, because some of the instances I'm talking about were not too long ago.


And while I have your ear, Evil One - the responses in this thread should illustrate that the public perception of the Rep System is pretty bad, and needs some repair. Neg Rep griefing is still an issue, and is perhaps the biggest problem with the way the system currently functions.

If Turbine cannot/will not give us the name of the person who gave us the Neg Rep, can it at least be looked into if each time Neg Rep is given, it has to be looked into by a Mod? Because I'd lay odds that 75% or more of the Neg Rep given is for spiteful or petty reasons - and not ones by which the system intends.

Faith needs to be put back into the system - because right now there is precious little to be had.

We do random audits of the reputation system, and as some of your friends could tell you (if discussing disciplinary action was ok, which it's not, so don't tell anyone) we have taken action on people that abuse the system.

We also understand that this system is not perfect, and that there are those that use it for purposes which it is not intended for. Unfortunately this is something that occurs with almost everything in society. 99 times out of 100, the random unwarranted negative reputation you receive will not affect your ability to post in the least. You can ignore it, or report it so that we can investigate specifically. We do have the ability to remove negative reputation hits if we feel it wasn't deserved.

Again, we understand the system isn't flawless, but from our back-end perspective we see it on the whole working the way we intend it to.

[Drakos]

Hi Yiren,

Aside from what everyone here has said (and thanks, +1 to all of you ), when you reach a certain threshold of negative reputation, your posts become automatically moderated until Tolero or myself approve them. This is to allow the community to exercise a degree of self-moderation, and to let you all catch anyone constantly posting inappropriate things (it has happened before) if we can't get there soon enough.

Thank you for your post to try and explain the system but it is not working as you claim.

The biggest problem is their is little to no feedback avaliable as to how you earned the rep. You can't even tell which posts you made that generated said rep without going to every post you have made and checking. Then all you get is Very Positive or Very Negative, so you can't use the system to police yourself.

Also there is no mechanism to refute or grieve the rep. Many use it as a means to try and punish, not police, those who disagree. It does not serve the "self moderation" goal you stated. It serves to let the bullies on the forums try and squelch and opposition to their devine opinions.

Now add to that that after being bullied enough, now you are being punished by the system because you have been beaten down to a set level. It would only work if those giving the rep had reprecusions for abusing the system. As it stands there is NO accounting for your actions.

Unless the goal it to only have a select group of people here that force everyone else into compliance the system does not serve the stated purpose, and should be either better policed or elliminated. It definatly does not support any kind of free thinking or differing opinions, it infacts punishes you for such. Just because an opinion in non-conformist does not make it any less a valid opinion, but the system here supports making it such.

Edit: Oh, my +1 you mentioned must have been lost in the mail because I never got it.

[rest]

. You can't even tell which posts you made that generated said rep without going to every post you have made and checking.

In your User CP in your rep section, the "latest reputation received" filed, it gives you a link to the post you made. It is shown as the thread title of the thread you posted in.

[Drakos]

In your User CP in your rep section, the "latest reputation received" filed, it gives you a link to the post you made. It is shown as the thread title of the thread you posted in.

Hey, thanks. It wans't showing my Rep section in the User CP because I had the 'Display Rep' turned off, so I didn't know that.

Thanks again.

[KingOfCheese]

A proposed (partial) solution to improper neg rep: require at least two neg reps on an individual post before neg rep is applied. This will largely prevent individual abusers from spite neg repping. It will also largely prevent the neg rep that results from a rare individual misreading a post and neg rep wars based on disagreements between two individuals.

All of the posts I've seen that most deserve neg rep appear to get tagged multiple times. Those would still get their neg rep.

[rest]

Hey, thanks. It wans't showing my Rep section in the User CP because I had the 'Display Rep' turned off, so I didn't know that.

Thanks again.

No worries

[ragwa1]

My question to everyone:

Why on earth do you care about internet reputation?

This is a sad thread.

[Drakos]

My question to everyone:

Why on earth do you care about internet reputation?

This is a sad thread.

Because of the potential for punishment tied to that Rep. If there wern't the potential to become auto-moderated for lots of neg Rep I wouldn't care.

[stainer]

Because of the potential for punishment tied to that Rep. If there wern't the potential to become auto-moderated for lots of neg Rep I wouldn't care.

I believe ragwa1 has been in, or close to the moderated status.

I doubt very highly there is anyone that has ended up moderated that either didn't see it coming, or, really cared that it was going to be the end result of their actions.

[Pyromaniac]

Here's some rep system basics. You either play the rep game or not.

If not, turn off your rep meter in the user CP. Nobody can then see your rep. You can get positive/negative rep, but its irrelevant visually. The only impact is Tarrant gets to read all your posts, or as many as he wants.

If you want a good rep bar, get a bunch of friends together and positive rep each other. Fastest way to do it. Or you could post a lot and hope those with positive rep bars agree with your opinion and like your posts.

In short, the rep system is broken, and has no impact to you ingame.