Reputations

[The Barrow-Wight]

The power of your reputation-giving goes up with your reputation and your time on the board (how long you have been a member). Older members have more reputation 'weight' than newer members, and those with high reputations have more 'weight' than people with lower reps. The weights are usually anywhere from 1 to 10 points, depending on the member, but people whose reputation drops below 0 have no weight at all and are wasting their time giving reputations. Stay above zero, or get above is you have already slipped.

[Imladris]

This question has been bugging me.

Please don't abuse the Reputation system. Don't use it as a way to play games or disrespect each other. Instead, use it to give your true opinion of the posts you rate. In doing so, you will give people a better idea of what we'd like to see on the Downs.

So what happens if somebody is obviously doing this? What do you do?

[The Barrow-Wight]

Tell one of the admins, and we'll check out.

[Thorongil]

Someone added to my reputation and the mark was blue. My points didn't go up or down. What was that?

[Fingolfin II]

Someone also added to my reputation and the box was grey. However, my points are still even also. What does this mean in terms of what the people rated me?

[The Barrow-Wight]

There are two colors of box: green and blue/grey. Green is positive and blue/grey is negative. In the case of both of you (Fingolfin II and Thorongil), a brand new member who has no reputation 'weight' has gone around giving reputations to everyone - with no comments. When I say that he has no weight, I mean that even though he is clicking the reputation button, his action does not add or subtract any points from you. Let me explain why.

The reputation system is well designed. It does not allow people to just indiscriminantly run around the forum changing peoples reputations. It has a series of rules that determine how often you can give reputations and how much weight you have. Let me explain weight.

Weight is the number of points that you can change someone else's reputation up or down. Each person 'weight' is determined by the following formula.

1 point for every 365 days you are a member
1 point for every 100 points of your own reputation
1 point for every 1000 posts

If you don't meet any of these criteria, you add 0 points when giving reputations and are wasting your time.

If your personal reputation falls below 0, you lose all reputation giving weight until your bring your reputation back up.

Translating all of this into English, you need to have been a member for a year, OR have at least 1000 posts, or have a 100 reputations points of your own if you want to give reputations points. Obviously, the easiest way for new members to get the power to give reputations is to get a good reputation. You do so by impressing others with good posts.

There are other rules:

1) You must have 50 posts on the forum before you can give reputations
2) You must have 10 reputations points of your own before you can give reputations
3) You must give reputation to 20 different people before coming back to the same person
4) You can only give 10 reputations a day



To the 'wizard' who is running around giving reputations and still hasn't posted once, you are wasting your time. Either discuss Middle-earth or find a new playground.

Sincerely
BW

[alatar]

Originally Posted by The Barrow-Wight

If you don't meet any of these criteria, you add 0 points when giving reputations and are wasting your time.

Could this information be presented elsewhere, such as in the FAQ? I stumbled onto the reputation thing purely by accident, (got excited) thought that I knew what it was doing, then found out here that I was most likely 'wasting my time.'

Thanks.