Radim
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- Joined
- Aug 17, 2016
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Reputation system: meaning & value
It was written here several times about meaning and value of the reputation on LPF. I would like to express my opinion about that. Just a few thoughts gained over the time I spent here. The purpose of this thread is to just look on reputation system from different perspectives and possibly improve it by the way how it is used. I know, a lot has been discussed here, I just wanted to let you know my thoughts and observation of the rep system I made during my short stay here.
What is a reputation and what is it not?
Of course it is just a limited metrics not expressing much about that person. People are complex and reputation here is not complex enough to capture it with some relevance (I doubt such a metrics exists anyway), but that is not the point I would like to discuss. I'll take it from the other end and look what the rep might really mean.
Slight analogy of reputation with money in economics
As recently there are many members with rep powers of over 10 000 what was not usual in the past, we can see (and I saw it discussed in many posts here) some "repflation" (I call by this term reputation inflation) with higher scores appearing. It reminds me kind of effect composed from healthy inflation, quantitative easing and loan based money creation known in economics. Let’s talk about these analogies a bit.
Let's assume the member A has a rep power of 10 000. If A gives an rep+ to a member B, they receive those points and divided by 100, B‘s rep power increases by 100 therefore. If the member B further gives a rep to a member C, the C receives those 100 points and his rep power increases by 1. Here due to rounding it might also affect another member D, to whom the member C gave rep.
So, here we can see some pattern as similar for commercial banks creating money through loans. They borrow money from central bank (here quantitative easing might play role), further they might give a loan to some company or natural person, who spends them or invest in somethig. Here the money go to another subject, which stores them in bank (or pass them further) and the bank might lend those funds to someone and so on. To stop infinite money creation there are some regulation rules for banks to keep certain percentage of the minimum reserves from the money given them to store (savings) before they are lend further. This ensures still smaller and smaller fraction of original money input is possible to be passed further. This mechanism also ensures that banking system is stabile as there is always some cash needed for transactions being made. Still, if banks did not borrow money they were lend from you and central bank, they would loose their sense as money creator and would just be some storage, where money is unused. The whole thing is much more complicated, but I would like to keep this simple here. You might look for keyword „money multiplier“ for more.
Regarding the inflation – if it is mild it might be sign of good economics performance, where prices rise with reasonable rate. In case of enormous inflation, there is different situation when other factors play significant role and usually something is wrong. Inflation might be even negative, here the economics usually does not work well for some reason. I simplified it here a lot, sorry for those economically educated, but as this is not academic text, I might allow to be not accurate completely.
Basicaly positive inflation says that amount of money now have higher value than the same amount in future (you might buy more stuff now with this amount than in the future).
Here it is the most evident effect recognized here by long term members, what I’ve seen - that "the reputation has not the same value as it used to have". I also ilustrate this effect below.
In terms of value – value in money nowadays is based on trust. You trust you might exchange your money for something you need/want (or as a help like charity). You just trust your money will be accepted in future otherwise you would not accept them from someone giving them to you for some stuff you sell. One point to mention – government might force to use their money by requiring to pay taxes in them. This is how you can create first need to use these money instead some other money.
In terms of rep – it has only the value we trust it has, nothing more, nothing less. It is not that strong as with money, but the principle is very similar.
Now put together healthy inflation (analogy of good working economics is good working comunity here) and our trust it has some value as assumptions. Now we see we reward by this value members, who post some valuable stuff here. We somehow reward them, pay our respect for what they did etc. Even, there is the value of single point somehow decreasing in time, there is nothing wrong with that. We need to keep the economics/community running to keep us wealthy in terms of money (in cash)/reputation. Do you see that both - economics and community here are dynamic systems?
I simplified that a lot, but I wanted to ilustrate the analogy here. Basically we all act similar to both - banks, economic subjects involved and maybe even like a central bank a bit.
Rules and mechanisms keeping the rep out of enormous growth and other specifics
Let's go deeper into the mechanisms protecting the reputation "out of infinity" – on LPF here we have also some rules preventing uncontrolable rep creation – factor of 100 for rep points to rep power creation (representing bank minimal reserve requirements in the analogy). And also spreading limit for member and day how much rep might be given.
Also there is impossible to give just a fraction of points, we always give full rep power, on the other hand our points do not decrease when given to somebody. It looks like loan from bank balance sheet point of view, but loan has to be repaid in some time, so here is the difference. However the system always says something like „Let’s hope you get it back…“ So it might somehow affect to give rep back. Again no point deducted from account.
And for any member to allow them to give reps is needed to reach 50 posts and have a positive rep power. I also noticed that there are some extra few points added to each member (not sure about the criteria, might depend on time etc.). And rep power is rounded up to full rep power point.
The default points for a new member seems to be 10 (0,01 rep power, rounded to 1). They are added once the first positive rep is received, what I've noticed. So, here we can see kind of issuing new rep points (forum system is acting like central bank issuing new money or more accurately new member, by registration act and after he is firstly rewarded).
Also we might reward with some negative points (I noticed about 50 % of rep power is deducted from points) those, who are acting oposite of contribution (kind of penalty or in analogy reducing the money in economics). I do not discuss it further as this is significant only for the fresh members trying to do bad here (spamming, trolling…) – so here quickly red bars will show and the member might be banned. Still I noticed it is not common here to give negative reps for the community unless it is really not suitable behavior of individual receiving it. So I do not discuss these cases further.
Well, the processes and some similarities with money have been explained, but what is a value of rep in deed? In what we can trust? I'll discuss it further, but some statement should be done even here. Each member here might collect the reputation, what is some reward for their contributions to the forums from other members.
From here the member A has some number and is able to reward another member B and so on. So basically the rep power of member A somehow represents how valuable contributions were done by them and if rewarding B, the A express to their best that B’s post or action is valuable – that it‘s worth something.
Of course repflation apply, so you might find members with thousands of posts with low rep power, but not active much recently, but that does not mean they had just a little contribution to the LPF.
Conclusion of my observations
The conclusion is, if we keep this on mind, that by giving a rep to somebody we act in the sense of repflation I wrote above, we need to treat it carefully to keep some value of this number. However the value is relative, but it is similar to money value in this principle.
Implying meaning of reputation and its problems
Why to do that and care about reps? Not only it might look nice next to your name (I personally care just a little about that, just as one of the indicators, where further indicators must be considered), but it is important measure for newcomers to LPF to give them some reference who’s post is trustworthy and likely to have some real value. Let’s express it with an example (assumption is both members X and Y are registered by same date, have equal number of posts):
If you are newcomer, who’s answer you would take as more valuable advice? Assume you know nothing about the LPF, just see the rep power and answers to your question.
The only problem of repflation here is that if we switch the rep powers for X and Y not needing the assumption of same presence on the LPF and same number of posts, the newcomer might be confused by meaning of this number not aware the member X is on LPF long time ago with huge contributions and got out of laser hobby due to some reason for a while. On the other hand member Y is registered quite recently but due to repflation he got rewards only from a few members for a nice welcome post only. (Allright, here the numbers are quite extreme in the example above in nowadays values, but I think you get, what I’m trying to say…)
How to come out of this? Well, I think the best is to say something about you in your signature shortly (quote, your thought…) – post links of your contributions to LPF, make it interesting. If relevat also mention you did a review on the laser the newcomer is asking and so on.
In case of long term member, but not active for some time, but just returned here the gap in presence might attract attention of active vets here (often remembering that guy from past for his contributions) and those with high rep power might boost the rep of this member fast to comparable numbers to eliminate this problem (as he is quite known, it won’t take much time to improve).
Also a good point mentioned by Alaskan in some thread recently - giving reps to inactive memebers to pass the spreading limit is a problem, still there is a daily limit to somehow protecting the system. Or missusing the rep system for „rep war“ – I was surprised something like this even happend, as I cannot even get where there is point in it. I see it basically on the same behaviour level as trolling and spamming. Hopefully this won’t happen again. It does not have any sense and it just damage the entire system
Signature as reputation substitute/complement
As I mentioned role of the signature, I would like to write a bit more about that. Since the signature is visible next to your rep power and join date, this might be really helpful of showing your selected contribution and who you are. It is much easier to see signature than click on your name to get to the profile.
Let’s take my current signature as an example and analyze it a bit as I use it in this sense:
First of all I introduce myself by my three quotes. First one is purely emotional (and I think a bit funny) about lasers how I see them. The second one is emotional as well, but combined with scientific and racional way of thinking which I use. The last one plays with readers by warning not to try laserpainting, but the effect is likely completely opposite. That's directly evident. That’s the purpose. The point is to show a few simple thoughts about myself in more understandable way, therefore using emotions, as "emotions sell better".
Further I present my laser collection in colorful way exactly as nominal wavelength of that laser is in RGB (using my excel wavelength to RGB in hexadecimal format calculator). There is even a link to my first review next to one of my lasers. Further links will come once I review the lasers I have. From time to time I post even lasers ordered and coming soon below as you can notice. This is to let others know what can be expected in my collection in near future, what they might ask me about, what they can look forward to see in my artworks. The purpose is to give reference of with what I have my experience, what I use, what you might ask me about when considering new laser purchase and or doing business with some company etc.
The next part is focussed on my use of lasers in laserpainting art. What I do with lasers, what are some of my other interests related to lasers. There is a link to first post in my thread (I’m going to adjust it soon as well as thread name). Link to latest artwork for convenience and to announce it to those who did not notice published it in new posts. I added also link to my instagram representing other social media, where I publish them.
Of course further content might be added in the future.
Finally there is kind request promoting LPF hashtag to make the forums more known on other social media as great place for those interested in lasers. BTW the reasons, why long version instead of short LPF is used, that LPF is already taken by some soccer club or something. Still this hashtag is rarely used, but I believe it might be more in the future with increasing number of tagged content. I use it on Instagram and Facebook.
Here you might see my signature serves multiple purpose for the other community members and newcomers, to give more information and context of my posts, who I am and shows even direct intention to promote LPF and help community potentially gain new members. I can even refer to the links in the signature in posts I write, to show exactly what I mean. For example when someone speaks about a laser similar or same I used in recent artwork, I might point it out to show how the laser looks like compared with other colors and tell my experience with that.
I think it says much more about myself, than only single number showing rep power and join date. There is much more value and information there and even newcomer might get some reference and possibly become more attracted into the hobby when seeing how awesome lasers are. And finally it gives some relevance to the reputation number and join date next to my avatar, which would be meaningless and missleading without my signature.
Further value of reputation
Further there is also some value in reaching some goals, you might want to set your own personal goal (you „compete“ against yourself) to reach certain number and contribute to forum to receive reps. It might be motivating to keep you active with high quality content, helping others etc. The real reason why to do it might be just because you want to return what LPF gave you in your laser beginnings and is giving you now and keep yourself contributing to the community. Of course you might do it from different reasons and have a different motivation, but it is a nice metrics to have and you can set it for this purpose – but it is just for you, your personal one (here no cheating makes sense at all). Why is it good only for personal purposes? Because you cannot buy anything for that and usually well respected members here do not care about this number much, the more important is the contribution and how the you behave here. Therefore there is no point in rising this number artificialy as you cheat only yourself and cause the reputation system to loose its sense a bit, the only real effect reached finally.
I also like it as a feedback and I read all comments in my rep page before they roll down as it is important to me to know why I was given it, what and why my post is appreciated. I’m even happy for reps with neutral effect from those below 50 posts, as often I can find comments there, which contain some feedback. Good to have this feature.
Conclusion
So there are multiple purposes of reputation system here. But rep is definitely not comparable number under any simple circumstances, much more complex comparsion is needed, what makes reputation practically not comparable. It is good to understand how it is created.
Reputation system is kind of extra feedback communication and rewarding tool. Nothing else. Still there might be very interesting effects and relations found, which are similar to monetary system. I pointed out just some similarities and specific differences and did not go much into depth (like deriving math formulas describing it, but the monetary theory formulas might be used as inspiration or more precise description in academic way).
The reputation also might have some value, but it is strongly depending only on how we perceive this value and how we trust it. Even, there are similarities with value of money, the reputation value is from principial reasons something completely different.
Would I change it somehow? No, since the system is working, there is no need to adjust it and make it more deformed. Repflation is just natural property, not defect at all. Basically the replflation is not bad thing if reasonable and might be sign of active community as value of one rep point decreases in time. It is the natural property of the system in deed.
We might consider making a model defining reputation value at some moment in past similar to this how inflation is measured and to compare somehow the reputation „value“. But there is a little practical sense in it in my opinion. Still that might be interesting to study.
The more important is to show who you are, present examples of your contributions here and give some reference about yourself. Newcomer as well as member will notice it and might get much more value and contextual information from it than from single rep number. It is not useless, just irrelevant for direct and blind comparsion. Still mainly your posts and actions here speak about you the most.
Final questions and points for discussion
I’m sorry if I was not clear in something, or maybe even wrong. Do not hesitate to post your constructive critics. I believe understanding the system of reputation might help us improve this tool in terms of using it and keep its value and benefit for the LPF.
What about you? What is your opinion and understanding of the reps here? Did I change your point of view on reputation system after reading this post?
Do you know who gave the first rep and how it all started? In analogy, who was the „central bank“ issuing the rep? I assume we are all a bit of „central banks“ by some default points given and due to rounding up in rep power (we in general give slightly more, than we have – not usual with money rounding), therefore also the system acts as central bank.
It was written here several times about meaning and value of the reputation on LPF. I would like to express my opinion about that. Just a few thoughts gained over the time I spent here. The purpose of this thread is to just look on reputation system from different perspectives and possibly improve it by the way how it is used. I know, a lot has been discussed here, I just wanted to let you know my thoughts and observation of the rep system I made during my short stay here.
What is a reputation and what is it not?
Of course it is just a limited metrics not expressing much about that person. People are complex and reputation here is not complex enough to capture it with some relevance (I doubt such a metrics exists anyway), but that is not the point I would like to discuss. I'll take it from the other end and look what the rep might really mean.
Slight analogy of reputation with money in economics
As recently there are many members with rep powers of over 10 000 what was not usual in the past, we can see (and I saw it discussed in many posts here) some "repflation" (I call by this term reputation inflation) with higher scores appearing. It reminds me kind of effect composed from healthy inflation, quantitative easing and loan based money creation known in economics. Let’s talk about these analogies a bit.
Let's assume the member A has a rep power of 10 000. If A gives an rep+ to a member B, they receive those points and divided by 100, B‘s rep power increases by 100 therefore. If the member B further gives a rep to a member C, the C receives those 100 points and his rep power increases by 1. Here due to rounding it might also affect another member D, to whom the member C gave rep.
So, here we can see some pattern as similar for commercial banks creating money through loans. They borrow money from central bank (here quantitative easing might play role), further they might give a loan to some company or natural person, who spends them or invest in somethig. Here the money go to another subject, which stores them in bank (or pass them further) and the bank might lend those funds to someone and so on. To stop infinite money creation there are some regulation rules for banks to keep certain percentage of the minimum reserves from the money given them to store (savings) before they are lend further. This ensures still smaller and smaller fraction of original money input is possible to be passed further. This mechanism also ensures that banking system is stabile as there is always some cash needed for transactions being made. Still, if banks did not borrow money they were lend from you and central bank, they would loose their sense as money creator and would just be some storage, where money is unused. The whole thing is much more complicated, but I would like to keep this simple here. You might look for keyword „money multiplier“ for more.
Regarding the inflation – if it is mild it might be sign of good economics performance, where prices rise with reasonable rate. In case of enormous inflation, there is different situation when other factors play significant role and usually something is wrong. Inflation might be even negative, here the economics usually does not work well for some reason. I simplified it here a lot, sorry for those economically educated, but as this is not academic text, I might allow to be not accurate completely.
Basicaly positive inflation says that amount of money now have higher value than the same amount in future (you might buy more stuff now with this amount than in the future).
Here it is the most evident effect recognized here by long term members, what I’ve seen - that "the reputation has not the same value as it used to have". I also ilustrate this effect below.
In terms of value – value in money nowadays is based on trust. You trust you might exchange your money for something you need/want (or as a help like charity). You just trust your money will be accepted in future otherwise you would not accept them from someone giving them to you for some stuff you sell. One point to mention – government might force to use their money by requiring to pay taxes in them. This is how you can create first need to use these money instead some other money.
In terms of rep – it has only the value we trust it has, nothing more, nothing less. It is not that strong as with money, but the principle is very similar.
Now put together healthy inflation (analogy of good working economics is good working comunity here) and our trust it has some value as assumptions. Now we see we reward by this value members, who post some valuable stuff here. We somehow reward them, pay our respect for what they did etc. Even, there is the value of single point somehow decreasing in time, there is nothing wrong with that. We need to keep the economics/community running to keep us wealthy in terms of money (in cash)/reputation. Do you see that both - economics and community here are dynamic systems?
I simplified that a lot, but I wanted to ilustrate the analogy here. Basically we all act similar to both - banks, economic subjects involved and maybe even like a central bank a bit.
Rules and mechanisms keeping the rep out of enormous growth and other specifics
Let's go deeper into the mechanisms protecting the reputation "out of infinity" – on LPF here we have also some rules preventing uncontrolable rep creation – factor of 100 for rep points to rep power creation (representing bank minimal reserve requirements in the analogy). And also spreading limit for member and day how much rep might be given.
Also there is impossible to give just a fraction of points, we always give full rep power, on the other hand our points do not decrease when given to somebody. It looks like loan from bank balance sheet point of view, but loan has to be repaid in some time, so here is the difference. However the system always says something like „Let’s hope you get it back…“ So it might somehow affect to give rep back. Again no point deducted from account.
And for any member to allow them to give reps is needed to reach 50 posts and have a positive rep power. I also noticed that there are some extra few points added to each member (not sure about the criteria, might depend on time etc.). And rep power is rounded up to full rep power point.
The default points for a new member seems to be 10 (0,01 rep power, rounded to 1). They are added once the first positive rep is received, what I've noticed. So, here we can see kind of issuing new rep points (forum system is acting like central bank issuing new money or more accurately new member, by registration act and after he is firstly rewarded).
Also we might reward with some negative points (I noticed about 50 % of rep power is deducted from points) those, who are acting oposite of contribution (kind of penalty or in analogy reducing the money in economics). I do not discuss it further as this is significant only for the fresh members trying to do bad here (spamming, trolling…) – so here quickly red bars will show and the member might be banned. Still I noticed it is not common here to give negative reps for the community unless it is really not suitable behavior of individual receiving it. So I do not discuss these cases further.
Well, the processes and some similarities with money have been explained, but what is a value of rep in deed? In what we can trust? I'll discuss it further, but some statement should be done even here. Each member here might collect the reputation, what is some reward for their contributions to the forums from other members.
From here the member A has some number and is able to reward another member B and so on. So basically the rep power of member A somehow represents how valuable contributions were done by them and if rewarding B, the A express to their best that B’s post or action is valuable – that it‘s worth something.
Of course repflation apply, so you might find members with thousands of posts with low rep power, but not active much recently, but that does not mean they had just a little contribution to the LPF.
Conclusion of my observations
The conclusion is, if we keep this on mind, that by giving a rep to somebody we act in the sense of repflation I wrote above, we need to treat it carefully to keep some value of this number. However the value is relative, but it is similar to money value in this principle.
Implying meaning of reputation and its problems
Why to do that and care about reps? Not only it might look nice next to your name (I personally care just a little about that, just as one of the indicators, where further indicators must be considered), but it is important measure for newcomers to LPF to give them some reference who’s post is trustworthy and likely to have some real value. Let’s express it with an example (assumption is both members X and Y are registered by same date, have equal number of posts):
If you are newcomer, who’s answer you would take as more valuable advice? Assume you know nothing about the LPF, just see the rep power and answers to your question.
The only problem of repflation here is that if we switch the rep powers for X and Y not needing the assumption of same presence on the LPF and same number of posts, the newcomer might be confused by meaning of this number not aware the member X is on LPF long time ago with huge contributions and got out of laser hobby due to some reason for a while. On the other hand member Y is registered quite recently but due to repflation he got rewards only from a few members for a nice welcome post only. (Allright, here the numbers are quite extreme in the example above in nowadays values, but I think you get, what I’m trying to say…)
How to come out of this? Well, I think the best is to say something about you in your signature shortly (quote, your thought…) – post links of your contributions to LPF, make it interesting. If relevat also mention you did a review on the laser the newcomer is asking and so on.
In case of long term member, but not active for some time, but just returned here the gap in presence might attract attention of active vets here (often remembering that guy from past for his contributions) and those with high rep power might boost the rep of this member fast to comparable numbers to eliminate this problem (as he is quite known, it won’t take much time to improve).
Also a good point mentioned by Alaskan in some thread recently - giving reps to inactive memebers to pass the spreading limit is a problem, still there is a daily limit to somehow protecting the system. Or missusing the rep system for „rep war“ – I was surprised something like this even happend, as I cannot even get where there is point in it. I see it basically on the same behaviour level as trolling and spamming. Hopefully this won’t happen again. It does not have any sense and it just damage the entire system
Signature as reputation substitute/complement
As I mentioned role of the signature, I would like to write a bit more about that. Since the signature is visible next to your rep power and join date, this might be really helpful of showing your selected contribution and who you are. It is much easier to see signature than click on your name to get to the profile.
Let’s take my current signature as an example and analyze it a bit as I use it in this sense:
First of all I introduce myself by my three quotes. First one is purely emotional (and I think a bit funny) about lasers how I see them. The second one is emotional as well, but combined with scientific and racional way of thinking which I use. The last one plays with readers by warning not to try laserpainting, but the effect is likely completely opposite. That's directly evident. That’s the purpose. The point is to show a few simple thoughts about myself in more understandable way, therefore using emotions, as "emotions sell better".
Further I present my laser collection in colorful way exactly as nominal wavelength of that laser is in RGB (using my excel wavelength to RGB in hexadecimal format calculator). There is even a link to my first review next to one of my lasers. Further links will come once I review the lasers I have. From time to time I post even lasers ordered and coming soon below as you can notice. This is to let others know what can be expected in my collection in near future, what they might ask me about, what they can look forward to see in my artworks. The purpose is to give reference of with what I have my experience, what I use, what you might ask me about when considering new laser purchase and or doing business with some company etc.
The next part is focussed on my use of lasers in laserpainting art. What I do with lasers, what are some of my other interests related to lasers. There is a link to first post in my thread (I’m going to adjust it soon as well as thread name). Link to latest artwork for convenience and to announce it to those who did not notice published it in new posts. I added also link to my instagram representing other social media, where I publish them.
Of course further content might be added in the future.
Finally there is kind request promoting LPF hashtag to make the forums more known on other social media as great place for those interested in lasers. BTW the reasons, why long version instead of short LPF is used, that LPF is already taken by some soccer club or something. Still this hashtag is rarely used, but I believe it might be more in the future with increasing number of tagged content. I use it on Instagram and Facebook.
Here you might see my signature serves multiple purpose for the other community members and newcomers, to give more information and context of my posts, who I am and shows even direct intention to promote LPF and help community potentially gain new members. I can even refer to the links in the signature in posts I write, to show exactly what I mean. For example when someone speaks about a laser similar or same I used in recent artwork, I might point it out to show how the laser looks like compared with other colors and tell my experience with that.
I think it says much more about myself, than only single number showing rep power and join date. There is much more value and information there and even newcomer might get some reference and possibly become more attracted into the hobby when seeing how awesome lasers are. And finally it gives some relevance to the reputation number and join date next to my avatar, which would be meaningless and missleading without my signature.
Further value of reputation
Further there is also some value in reaching some goals, you might want to set your own personal goal (you „compete“ against yourself) to reach certain number and contribute to forum to receive reps. It might be motivating to keep you active with high quality content, helping others etc. The real reason why to do it might be just because you want to return what LPF gave you in your laser beginnings and is giving you now and keep yourself contributing to the community. Of course you might do it from different reasons and have a different motivation, but it is a nice metrics to have and you can set it for this purpose – but it is just for you, your personal one (here no cheating makes sense at all). Why is it good only for personal purposes? Because you cannot buy anything for that and usually well respected members here do not care about this number much, the more important is the contribution and how the you behave here. Therefore there is no point in rising this number artificialy as you cheat only yourself and cause the reputation system to loose its sense a bit, the only real effect reached finally.
I also like it as a feedback and I read all comments in my rep page before they roll down as it is important to me to know why I was given it, what and why my post is appreciated. I’m even happy for reps with neutral effect from those below 50 posts, as often I can find comments there, which contain some feedback. Good to have this feature.
Conclusion
So there are multiple purposes of reputation system here. But rep is definitely not comparable number under any simple circumstances, much more complex comparsion is needed, what makes reputation practically not comparable. It is good to understand how it is created.
Reputation system is kind of extra feedback communication and rewarding tool. Nothing else. Still there might be very interesting effects and relations found, which are similar to monetary system. I pointed out just some similarities and specific differences and did not go much into depth (like deriving math formulas describing it, but the monetary theory formulas might be used as inspiration or more precise description in academic way).
The reputation also might have some value, but it is strongly depending only on how we perceive this value and how we trust it. Even, there are similarities with value of money, the reputation value is from principial reasons something completely different.
Would I change it somehow? No, since the system is working, there is no need to adjust it and make it more deformed. Repflation is just natural property, not defect at all. Basically the replflation is not bad thing if reasonable and might be sign of active community as value of one rep point decreases in time. It is the natural property of the system in deed.
We might consider making a model defining reputation value at some moment in past similar to this how inflation is measured and to compare somehow the reputation „value“. But there is a little practical sense in it in my opinion. Still that might be interesting to study.
The more important is to show who you are, present examples of your contributions here and give some reference about yourself. Newcomer as well as member will notice it and might get much more value and contextual information from it than from single rep number. It is not useless, just irrelevant for direct and blind comparsion. Still mainly your posts and actions here speak about you the most.
Final questions and points for discussion
I’m sorry if I was not clear in something, or maybe even wrong. Do not hesitate to post your constructive critics. I believe understanding the system of reputation might help us improve this tool in terms of using it and keep its value and benefit for the LPF.
What about you? What is your opinion and understanding of the reps here? Did I change your point of view on reputation system after reading this post?
Do you know who gave the first rep and how it all started? In analogy, who was the „central bank“ issuing the rep? I assume we are all a bit of „central banks“ by some default points given and due to rounding up in rep power (we in general give slightly more, than we have – not usual with money rounding), therefore also the system acts as central bank.
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As you could noticed I have recently ordered a new laser and some optics. It was my long term wish, basically since my laser beginnings a few years ago. I always wanted to have some Optotronics laser. It costed me some high bucks, therefore my laser fund is empty now. 
