Negative rep a no no conversation?

[ararax2]

So.... I and a few others have noticed that red rep bubbles have disappeared. There are several people that have previously had red bubbles now have green or grey bubbles instead (and not after enough time to have been given rep to turn them back green or turn it off).

Are red bubbles already too politically incorrect? Is it unfair that everyone live by the rules of the system? Did someone's precious feelings get hurt (after posting enough inflammatory nonsense to get turned red)? Or are we just not noticing what we're noticing?

Also, Sapience and Patience have both turned their rep display off. What's the point? We all know you're supergreen.

I actually reported someone yesterday, having a red dot when he obviously did not deserve it. The guy had been a member since launch, had like 20 or so posts over that time, and quite simply posted a I don't like where f2p is going I'm gone. Of course he then got verbally thrashed by some high rep people about being a cry baby and the guy was quite polite in his replies, even if he was arguing, someone posted a horrible horrible comment and the guy reported it and said he was reporting it. And then he got a red dot because that person was a high green poster.

Because someone felt like being a jerk.

It is people like that that ruin the rep system.

[Patience]

A number of changes have occured?

- Patience, Sapience, Freelorn (and maybe others) have disabled their rep completely.
- On your User Control Panel, the number of recent rep posts has been increased
- Public User Profile Pages no longer show current activity
- Negative rep is not displayed beyond being gray

1. The community team has now opted out of the rep system entirely. You can't give us rep, we can't give you rep, and our reputation shows as neutral. Reputation is now a community-only tool.
2. The number of rep posts you can see has now increased from 10 to 20 (if anyone has feedback on the change, please let us know).
3. The Profile Pages showing current activity was a misconfiguration and has been fixed (it was an artifact of Who's Online being enabled for some secondary usergroups when it shouldn't have been).
4. Yes. This prevent people from trying to farm a red rep bar - you'd be surprised at how often this happens. Green bars will only grow to a maximum length, then stop, so over time that balances out.

[Ayrolen]

You can tell, the tool-tip will say Neutral instead of stating the fact that you have disabled rep.

Ah right.

Having the possibility of obtaining a number of red boxes I believe encourages negative behavior in some that will try to get a bar of red.

Honestly, if someone wants to be a big enough tool that they get several red boxes, then they should be banned from the forums.

A number of changes have occured?

- Patience, Sapience, Freelorn (and maybe others) have disabled their rep completely.
- On your User Control Panel, the number of recent rep posts has been increased
- Public User Profile Pages no longer show current activity
- Negative rep is not displayed beyond being gray

Then they should announce those changes. I'm not a fan of changes that are back-doored in. It seems very sneaky.

[BryanThompson]

Yeah, I love how we are told what is and isn't a topic we can discuss. How people paying with hard earned dollars aren't "allowed" to complain about things they feel are wrong. Good thing Turbine isn't a country, it'd be early 20th century Russia.

[gildhur]

Yes. This prevent people from trying to farm a red rep bar - you'd be surprised at how often this happens. Green bars will only grow to a maximum length, then stop, so over time that balances out.

I thought you guys were policing for that sort of thing. If you're monitoring it, why make a blanket policy to not show red boxes at all? Since if you're doing your job (and I'm not saying you're not), then all red boxes shown would be legitimate. Seems rather inconsistent.

[Ayrolen]

Yeah, I love how we are told what is and isn't a topic we can discuss. How people paying with hard earned dollars aren't "allowed" to complain about things they feel are wrong. Good thing Turbine isn't a country, it'd be early 20th century Russia.

Your 1st Amendment rights (assuming you're American, of course) don't extend to an online forum with a Code of Conduct in place. And that's all I have to say about that b/c this argument has been made far too many times.

[robnkarla]

1. The community team has now opted out of the rep system entirely. You can't give us rep, we can't give you rep, and our reputation shows as neutral. Reputation is now a community-only tool.
2. The number of rep posts you can see has now increased from 10 to 20 (if anyone has feedback on the change, please let us know).
3. The Profile Pages showing current activity was a misconfiguration and has been fixed (it was an artifact of Who's Online being enabled for some secondary usergroups when it shouldn't have been).
4. Yes. This prevent people from trying to farm a red rep bar - you'd be surprised at how often this happens. Green bars will only grow to a maximum length, then stop, so over time that balances out.

Thank you for the confirmation on these. It helps to ensure that I'm not going batty

As for the increase from 10 to 20, I think it's worth it as 10 was pretty low.

Edit: And I appreciate the links to posts for quotes.

[ararax2]

1. The community team has now opted out of the rep system entirely. You can't give us rep, we can't give you rep, and our reputation shows as neutral. Reputation is now a community-only tool.
2. The number of rep posts you can see has now increased from 10 to 20 (if anyone has feedback on the change, please let us know).
3. The Profile Pages showing current activity was a misconfiguration and has been fixed (it was an artifact of Who's Online being enabled for some secondary usergroups when it shouldn't have been).
4. Yes. This prevent people from trying to farm a red rep bar - you'd be surprised at how often this happens. Green bars will only grow to a maximum length, then stop, so over time that balances out.

Solid changes, I very much agree.
It should encourage people to rate based on content.

This very much alleviates many of my fears about the system.

I thought you guys were policing for that sort of thing. If you're monitoring it, why make a blanket policy to not show red boxes at all? Since if you're doing your job (and I'm not saying you're not), then all red boxes shown would be legitimate. Seems rather inconsistent.

Because eventually everyone will be able to give out red rep, that is a lot of work for the C reps.

Your 1st Amendment rights (assuming you're American, of course) don't extend to an online forum with a Code of Conduct in place. And that's all I have to say about that b/c this argument has been made far too many times.

Well you have a right to say anything you want in Turbine forums or in my house. But Turbine also has the right to kick you out of their forums and I have a right to kick you out of my house if I don't like it.

Freedom of speech only allows you to (with in reason) be free from federal and state government penalties on your speech. If you violate Turbines CoC the government will not arrest you but you will be banned.

[romoen]

The community team has now opted out of the rep system entirely. You can't give us rep, we can't give you rep, and our reputation shows as neutral. Reputation is now a community-only tool.

Wow!!! Thank you!!!

Okay, I'm sure this is well beyond pompus of me (I'm far from the first to discuss the subject) but did any of you by chance read: Abusing Forum Guidelines and Rep: Mods Exempt?

[Thane9]

1. The community team has now opted out of the rep system entirely. You can't give us rep, we can't give you rep, and our reputation shows as neutral. Reputation is now a community-only tool.

Thanks Patience. I think this is the most responsible way to handle the rep system.

+rep

Oh...hehehe...

[Patience]

Wow!!! Thank you!!!

Okay, I'm sure this is well beyond pompus of me (I'm far from the first to discuss the subject) but did any of you by chance read: Abusing Forum Guidelines and Rep: Mods Exempt?

I did! And I kept meaning to respond but didn't get a chance to (it's been a bit nuts lately, go figure). While your blog post didn't cause the change, the discussion was definitely noticed and helped validate the decision.

[romoen]

I did! And I kept meaning to respond but didn't get a chance to (it's been a bit nuts lately, go figure). While your blog post didn't cause the change, the discussion was definitely noticed.

*happy dance*

Thank you for giving us an outlet there to have discussions that wouldn't necessarily make it past the mod-hammer here.

P.S. Add "total views" counters to my.lotro!

[ararax2]

Wow!!! Thank you!!!

Okay, I'm sure this is well beyond pompus of me (I'm far from the first to discuss the subject) but did any of you by chance read: Abusing Forum Guidelines and Rep: Mods Exempt?

Excellent article, it really describes my feelings to the rep system in general. It had gotten to the point where the main order of the day was don't argue with someone who has a lot of rep or they will stalk you with - rep, and convince their rep farming friends to do so as well.

I think this new system of not showing - rep really will help dissuade people who - rep from trying to "red tag" others.

Going forward
I also think that giving - rep should be limited to once per day, to encourage people to properly use it. Also Turbine might want to take a quick look at oh say anyone who has handed out - rep 20+ times or 50+ times and see if their abusing the system.

[Khafar]

Also Turbine might want to take a quick look at oh say anyone who has handed out - rep 20+ times or 50+ times and see if their abusing the system.

Well, there are already limits on how often it can be done, and as you suggested... they could lower that if it's a problem. Negative rep also has to be "spread around", just like positive rep - makes it harder to "stalk" someone else. Finally, negative rep is only worth half as much as positive rep. If I can +rep you for 30, I can only -rep you for 15.

I've only given out one "ding" to one poster, weeks ago. Of course, that was for a post I also /reported...

You know what would be interesting, but would probably make some people quite angry? Transparency: showing the percentage of positive rep that people are giving out to others when you hover over their little chiclets. Anyone with less than 1500 positive rep would obviously show up as 100%. Mine would be like 98% positive, but if someone were only 10% positive... I suspect their reputation would suffer for it .

Too bad they didn't have something like that in from the beginning - it would be more than a little unfair to spring that sort of thing later, even if the people exposed by it were being jerks.

Khafar

[romoen]

Originally Posted by ararax2
Also Turbine might want to take a quick look at oh say anyone who has handed out - rep 20+ times or 50+ times and see if their abusing the system.

I think the biggest -rep people were seeing are those that were being given out by the Moderators/Staff. They appeared (note: I don't know for sure) to have no limits to how much rep they could give, positive or negative, and they could also give the reputation, again positve or negative, to the same user without needing to spread it around first. That was making people see massive bonuses or hits to their reputation in very short durations of time.

This change they made is a fantastic one, and doing this change at all is enough for me; I don't think we should ask them to go any further and make adjustments as those numbers will even out over time anyway.

[gildhur]

Well, if negative rep no longer has a visible consequence, then neither should positive rep. I'm out.

[ararax2]

Well, if negative rep no longer has a visible consequence, then neither should positive rep. I'm out.

For months I've said that it was just a silly social game. Do you really think that people were supposed to be impressed that some people had giant bars of green?

Really, what "consequences" should positive rep have? Everyone knows that discounting a few people who give a lot to the community it's mainly a bunch of forum junkies who pat each other on the back.

If anything the system works fine now by allowing the people who are on most to identify problem posts via negative rep.

[IGolbezI]

I know! All my life, I've worked towards that full rep bar just so I could give negative rep!!

/wrist

[KainXI]

Well, if negative rep no longer has a visible consequence, then neither should positive rep. I'm out.

It still has the concequence of removing green bars. I mean, honestly how many people actually had red rep boxes? Very very few. What most people who posted things that got them -repped had was simply less green ones.

For months I've said that it was just a silly social game. Do you really think that people were supposed to be impressed that some people had giant bars of green?

OK now I'm confused. How else am I supposed to measure my worth as a human being?

[bigsix66]

1. Yes. This prevent people from trying to farm a red rep bar - you'd be surprised at how often this happens. Green bars will only grow to a maximum length, then stop, so over time that balances out.

I'm not sure what you mean by "balances out" in this context.

If you're going to make these kind of changes, it seems to me that you can just go a little further and remove the forum feedback system altogether. I don't say that petulantly. It just seems like the most logical thing to do.

[gildhur]

I'm not sure what you mean by "balances out" in this context.

If you're going to make these kind of changes, it seems to me that you can just go a little further and remove the forum feedback system altogether. I don't say that petulantly. It just seems like the most logical thing to do.

Indeed. If you remove the display of red boxes because people could potentially farm negative rep against someone, you're admitting that the entire system is meaningless. Moderation was supposed to prevent that farming from taking place. But if it can happen negatively, then it can certainly happen positively (since by definition many more people can participate in that side of it), and the green boxes are just as meaningless, if not more so. Just disable the whole system at this point. You've proven that it's worthless.

[ararax2]

Indeed. If you remove the display of red boxes because people could potentially farm negative rep against someone, you're admitting that the entire system is meaningless. Moderation was supposed to prevent that farming from taking place. But if it can happen negatively, then it can certainly happen positively (since by definition many more people can participate in that side of it), and the green boxes are just as meaningless, if not more so. Just disable the whole system at this point. You've proven that it's worthless.

It's not worthless at all, it was planned to be a way for C reps to identify problem areas and topics that were going down hill, plus I think any post that gets a ton of - rep gets automatically removed for moderation.

Of course people can and have been farming rep.

But it is supposed to be used to help C reps identify topics they should be looking at.

[Ayrolen]

It's not worthless at all, it was planned to be a way for C reps to identify problem areas and topics that were going down hill, plus I think any post that gets a ton of - rep gets automatically removed for moderation.

Of course people can and have been farming rep.

But it is supposed to be used to help C reps identify topics they should be looking at.

Then if that's its only use, then all visual display of rep should be removed. No red bubbles, no green bubbles. Everything will be internal and no one will know who has what.

[bigsix66]

It's not worthless at all, it was planned to be a way for C reps to identify problem areas and topics that were going down hill, plus I think any post that gets a ton of - rep gets automatically removed for moderation.

Of course people can and have been farming rep.

But it is supposed to be used to help C reps identify topics they should be looking at.

Based on the number of threads that have been closed and cleaned during the past few days, I don't think the Customer Reps need much help in that area.

If a person gets so much angst from seeing a red box under their name and makes so much of a stink about it that the entire system needs to be revamped, I think the basic system itself has a problem.

[bigsix66]

Then if that's its only use, then all visual display of rep should be removed. No red bubbles, no green bubbles. Everything will be internal and no one will know who has what.

Um, yeah. That too.