Reputation - Should both sides be treated equally?

[lairy]

You do have to, all +rep has to be valid and if when Forum Management check a -rep you report the T&C clearly state that they can remove any pointless +reps, people wouldn't report those now would they

Which is why you can wrongly or rightly -rep certain people knowing for sure they won't report it in fear of losing all their pointless +rep. Didn't Joe (Alkaz) lose like 1000 rep points or something?

[Inseriousity.]

I think it's fine how it is now, what I dislike is the fact that they use reputation points as an incentive to enter competitions :/

I think there's a lot of myth surrounding rep in competitions. If the rep given out is diluted down enough (ie shared between so many people) then it becomes worthless.

For example, in March 2011, the person who got the highest amount of rep given out by the Competitions Department got a 17% share of the total amount of rep given out that month. That means the other 83% is shared between everyone else, bearing in mind that it has to always remain lower than 17. And if you're wondering why I have these figures, I'm not sad, I didn't do it for fun, I've already had this argument

It's often said in the spam forum that "it'd be easier for me to rep you" but I don't really see that as a bad thing tbh. As long as managers are sensible, I see no problem with giving out rep in competitions.

edit: as for the actual topic of the thread, I don't think we should treat them equally. I always think we should promote the use of +rep as much as possible but also allow the option to -rep if needed. The current system helps keep that balance (not perfect maybe that's up to debate).

[FlyingJesus]

I'd suggest that -rep ought to be displayed in the same way +rep currently is on the post itself, certainly. To suggest that it would encourage group bullying is daft as it would only be actual "bullying" if it was all pointless rep with reasons that have nothing to do with the post itself, and if people really want to attack someone they can do it without a counter on each post.

As a compromise (and one that's been mentioned before plenty of times) there ought to at least be a negative effect on any +reps that a post shows if the same post is -repped by others, as currently there are cases of posts being +repped by a few and -repped or disputed heavily by a number of people, yet it will still be displayed as something that people like - essentially showing that we as a community have ideals and viewpoints that aren't actually shared by the vast majority

[Eoin247]

I agree with Fj. Last time this was discussed i asked for this. Unless it's impossible to implement it ''technically'', then i see no reason why not to introduce it.