Suggestion: Turn off the ability to give reps for old posts.

It has come to my attention a member has been repping posts which are years old, or members who are no longer active, in order to use up the number of reps which must be given before they can roll around to be able to negative rep the same person again.

The only reason I believe someone would do this is so they don't have to give out positive reps to active members, while at the same time being able to give more negative reps to active members they are unhappy with.

I don't see this as fair play, especially if the member is approaching a thousand positive reps which allows them to inordinately inflict far more damage to the individual they are negging than is reasonable, especially new members.

If it is possible to turn off the ability to rep someone either positive, or negative, once a post is older than 60-90 days, I believe this would be helpful to make the forum a better place, forcing reps to be given to active posters, not something posted years ago. I believe a window of one to three months is more than fair as most posts are not responded to after a thirty day period anyway.

If this change can't be made for some reason or another, whether the software won't allow it, or admin doesn't agree, there is another way to handle this. If one of these long time members uses their high reps to destroy the reputation of a new member, or for that matter any member unjustly, I suggest a number of us group together to give positive reps back to those individuals, if they didn't really deserve so much damage, or any negative rep at all, which sometimes happens.

I will go even further and would be happy to positive rep anyone when they are negged by someone who takes more than one rep away, whether deserved or not.

Ahhh, the strength of numbers is realized yet again, then you discover the "bad guy" has a group of like minded veterans who have high counts willing to come to his aid......so why not do like you said and repair those who got nailed undeservingly...... But not just anyone punished what so ever, because some fool spouting dangerous behavior needs to be reprimanded for the security of our entire hobby, and if anyone can do anything with impunity then we have anarchy out of which grows law again due to it's necessity.

All I am saying is make sure the person being repaired didn't deserve the punishment or they will draw more and take you down with them.

seems to me rep around here is kinda like the U.S.A.'s GDP. it's kinda telling, but also kinda meaningless. it's by no means quantified evenly by merit, and is subject to much bias. ideally each post can be repped by the same person based on that particular post's merits, and in a perfect world where people tried to use the rep system fairly, this wouldnt be a problem. obviously the situation is less than ideal, and if each post could be repped you would have people going around neg repping every post by a person just because they dont like them for whatever reason. is spouting false information reason enough to earn someone's dislike? I would say yes. but if it were possible to do this (rep each post regardless of member or how much rep has been spread since, etc), I dont see Cyp going around to every post by a person and negging it arbitrarily because he didnt like them, though I've no doubt he'd neg rep it if the content of the post merited it, and not liking the person might motivate him to check the content of their posts. is going around repping old non active members so you can neg someone again, regardless of the post deserving it or not, going too far? well, I don't know. it's farther than I'd go but perhaps he feels justified. maybe he is. maybe it's one of those morally ambiguous loopholes

cyp might be a dick but from what I've seen he is usually a correct one. I'd say if his criticism is valid, try to accept it while emotionally detatching from it. dont worry so much about the lengths he may be going to to accomplish it, just consider how much time that takes him, it must be pretty important to him. while you may be feeling hurt, reflect on that.

consider how much time it took for me to type this? why did I do that?

I will again ask, why is it not considered an "Exploit" to find a "loophole" to be able to continuously reg rep someone?

I will again state I am in no way accusing anyone. I have not and will not do the research to see if this is or is not occurring... That's a moderator's/admin's job.

There are already some limitations in place on how many reps can be given in a period of time, and how often a person can be repped by the same member.

No system is perfect, and free from abuse.

A change that I would love to see, is the ability to control how much rep is given or taken. That would allow people who use the rep system more frequently to not do as much damage to someone's "reputation".

thanks for the suggestions, guys, I'm reviewing this and the vbulletin options with mod team to see if we any improvements can be made.

By popular demand, I'll start thinking twice about giving out neg rep. Since many people apparently take it very seriously, I guess it makes sense that I start taking it more seriously. Change with the times. Change with the community.

It takes a lot of time each day to just read new threads/posts, learn from them and to reply and/or help the person if you can.
I can't imagine how long it takes to hunt down old threads/posts, +Rep them just so you can build up rep to then whammy someone with a neg rep.
If that is truly what is going on, that is not fair for sure.

I see the value in being able to find accurate uncluttered information.
I wonder if a little chat room window in the lower left corner would be fun and help keep post clean and informative?
Of course there should be no rep for chat and no searchable record of the chat other than a log for the heck of it, but not as searchable information.

The thing is we have a 1000 people logged on yet only a handful of posters, maybe a chat window would be fun?

It's just an idea that would let instant debate of the validity of info be addressed before it's written into a post.

Agree with your idea Red. a chat room with instant messaging and instant notification like F@cebook would be great.


Edit: would the chat room be between 2 people and you can add more member for group messaging, or is it going to be like those public chat room where anyone can join?

and option for Moderator to kick member or mute them if they get out of hand?

It's best I think to make it public for everyone then have a side bar for private chat between people/persons in " private rooms "

EDIT: Yes a log would be kept so mods could review any seriously abusive chat.

A chat box makes sense. Most , if not all other forums I use has one.

Trendkilla254 said:

I will again ask, why is it not considered an "Exploit" to find a "loophole" to be able to continuously reg rep someone?

I will again state I am in no way accusing anyone. I have not and will not do the research to see if this is or is not occurring... That's a moderator's/admin's job.

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I agree

c0ldshadow said:

thanks for the suggestions, guys, I'm reviewing this and the vbulletin options with mod team to see if we any improvements can be made.

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About time you actually do something about this.
What about justice for the people he's trolled off of the forum? Don't they get a second chance?

Cyparagon said:

By popular demand, I'll start thinking twice about giving out neg rep. Since many people apparently take it very seriously, I guess it makes sense that I start taking it more seriously. Change with the times. Change with the community.

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"popular demand"? More like you made a huge mistake and is trying to avoid the punishment for your constant behavior.
Yeah from now on you will stop this crap. We don't want it here. Others get banned so quickly for much less yet you get to hang around.
They should ban you here and now imo.

You already knew that people take it seriously and you still didn't give two shits because no one did anything about it and you knew you could get away with it. Now you're sweating out of nervousness because you made the mistake of attacking a man that has been plus repping you nonstop and it backfired bad on you.

VisibleGreen said:

"popular demand"? More like you made a huge mistake and is trying to avoid the punishment for your constant behavior.
Yeah from now on you will stop this crap. We don't want it here. Others get banned so quickly for much less yet you get to hang around.
They should ban you here and now imo.

You already knew that people take it seriously and you still didn't give two shits because no one did anything about it and you knew you could get away with it. Now you're sweating out of nervousness because you made the mistake of attacking a man that has been plus repping you nonstop and it backfired bad on you.

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...you do realize this entire post just lends to what Cyparagon said? You two have differing premises for the use of the reputation system.

Since you're nothing more than an empty shell of seething hatred, I don't care what you think, visiblegreen. I'm willing to improve and move on, but you clearly aren't. "forgive and forget" isn't something you'll ever understand. Your loss, not mine.

I love this place