The good points of inflation is that everything inflates at the same rate keeping the balance. The bad points, members can get left behind.
Don't let the rep system bother you as there is no reason for it to.
That is, why I say it is similar to money (losing value in time) and therefore it cannot be used for direct comparsion, here the reputation fails (if that was meaned to) to provide it and makes it somehow more complicated, other tools are needed, where I suggested to use signature space to give reference instead and/or to accompany rep.
For example,
if I did not know Brucemir already and I saw in Bruce's signature link to his artworks here, that would gave me much more reference, than highly irrelevant rep number.
But that's me only and that's also point of this thread - to find if that practice might be useful and how it is perceived.
Jerry: Thanks for input. And no,
I do not compare the rep with money in that sense, I just say that there are
similar effects and relations as known with money in economics. Nothing else. And implying from this the inflation at some reasonable rate is just natural effect. Might be positive as indicator community is active (rep system is used and more rep points are created). However if the trust in value is none and rep is given just for free (I mean for posts without any value and rep is not deserved), than this rate would rise into higher number and cause kind of hyperinflation (as happend in Germany before WWII for example - in the morning there was one bag of money sufficient to buy bread and in the evening same day you needed wheelbarrow of money to buy it). In this case the rep system would loose its sense.
Comparing rep with money (like some rep points -> some amount of money) does not makes sense at all. If there is something like this and I could exchange rep for money, why not to do it and buy more lasers?
And vice versa - rep could be bought, what would cause loosing its sense at all. Here I think the difference between money and rep is very evident.
Cel: Good point. Not sure how significant it is to rep, but for post counts definitely. Anyway I think 1000 posts is not much since there is one year limit as well. If the member is averagely active, this might be moreless reached in one year time IMO.
To all: Very interesting discussion - it seems to me, that there really is some value (in other words - trust) in reps in general, even the unitary value of one point is decreasing in time.
Hopefully it will be kept here in friendly way further without quarrels, as this topic is quite sensitive here and I'm a bit worried now to cause some bad flame war or something if it turns wrong. The point is just to look at rep more from different angle and encourage to use it wisely to perceive the reward sense/value of it.
