On a related note, is it customary to host a giveaway every 100 points achieved? I read that in another post.

Who are these "selected individuals"? I am not sure I noticed them. Maybe I would agree there are very few selected individuals that can't do anything, without being downrepped (maybe JCD,... hm that's it perhaps), but never I noticed the opposite phenomenom.
Actually it's every 10 points.

SHIT! Back to the blood bank!

Don't forget about special occasions and holidays too.

You should probably just move into the blood bank, save on the trip.

There are certainly plenty of people here who have been or are still being automatically downrepped (the list is much longer than just JCD) just for being who they are, not what they have said, but I don't think anyone has ever been the "victim" of a concerted effort to uprep them for the same reasons. The only time I see large positive votes is when someone actually does or says something in a particular post that is considered good/cool/informative/funny/etc. by a significant number of the community. If it does seem that the same people keep getting rep, it's not because they are more popular than everyone else, it's because they often have something worth saying and they say it well. That's why I have always felt the "-" button is useless except to report spam. At least the "+" allows forumites to draw attention to particular posts they feel the rest of us should check out.

Okay, then I'll complain about not being repped :D Thing is, I really don't post much around here and it's clear that's not a good enough contribution to these forums.
Oh, and there you go, you got an upvote from me =)

Forum politics. Best thing on the net.

kromcita: "These constant complaints are fueled by people who feel that their opinions and posts must be seen by everyone."

I don't think that's it. You'll see that certain people almost constantly get "low rated" posts no matter what they're talking about, almost as if it's a game to other people. Perhaps it is, I don't know, but I do know I've seen a lot of low rated posts simply because of who's posting, not what they're saying.

Broken down into the few issues that arose in the course of this thread:
1. It's... INCONSISTENT D: !
You know what ? I'm not autistic. I'm willing to accept that the world is inconsistent. That's one of the most basic facts of life, to be honest.
Furthemore - as my ontology lecturer once said: "Anyone who thinks their views are 100% coherent is incredibly naive". I'm willing to live with this too, as long as things appear quite reasonable on the surface.
2. Down with down-voting !
Yeah, that's a great idea. After all - if people can no longer downvote others, everyone will love everyone else and this place will blossom into universal positivity ^^ !
Well, no. Guess what, genius, people will most likely think the same things but will merely be unable to express them in the gentlest slap-on-the-wrist way we have at out disposal. This is how I imagine a forum full of up-votes only. Magnificent, isn't it ?
3. Let's imagine...
OK, let's say that the forum does away the minus sign. All it takes is a little aggrement among us dissenters to treat the + button as the - button and pretend the + no longer exists (never mind the logistics, just follow the thought experiment along. The conclusions don't necessitate the premises). Soon enough green-marked posts would be the ones stigmatized and people would quickly grow to understand this practice and interpret the forum accordingly.
4. The dumbest thing about the entire suggestion...
...is that it perceives the symptoms as the sickness. People don't downvote others because there is a button there. They do so because THEY SEE IT AS JUST.
Can the community be mistaken and misjudge the rating a post should receive ? Duh. Does non-zero fallibility mean we should get rid of the system entirely ?
Hilariously enough - this forum rarely does treat people unfairly. Most here err on the side of caution.
5. Who gets downvotes
This is somewhat beside the point but I'm going to mention this anyway: how can we tell whether something we are about to post is OK ? Guess what - it's not an algorithm we follow. It's not a set of posted rules. If there's one thing I remember from my ethics lectures, it's that there can never be a finite set of rules an individual is meant to follow (and even if there is, it far exceeds the ability to remember, comprehend, calculate in real-time, etc); any ethically mature individual should know that and still be able to mostly make the right calls when faced with real-life problems.
In other words - use COMMON SENSE. People who are able to figure out the appropriate things to say in RL conversations should not lose this talent once online.
What makes the fact, that a post should be down-voted, a dead-giveaway ? As rule of thumb - the poster sounding like a blowhard or an idiot to use less than profound terms. Both cannot be reasoned with yet should not be simply tolerated (with possible exceptions - see above).

Wasn't that all awesome. You said alot but still.. I usually am drunk and such. I would like many other fucks saints stuff.

Best thing ever was.. Well Mprtal Kombat 1 ^^

That's exactly what I do. Only if I really think there is a troll who is overdoing it I click on the minus although in total I think reputation shouldn't really matter. It's just a quick way of answering to posts. Probably I will never know exactly if I am classy (enough) because I don't know what others understand by classy. I think there cannot be such a thing as a pure classy community.

Anyway I guess either some posts that should not be downvoted were downvoted or the other way around, otherwise you wouldn't write it. Because I don't know which cases these are, so I cannot say anything about it.

Not really. It's either due to game giveaways, or jokes that are popular with others here. The amount of times i've seen a serious debate with loads of great comments, only to see a random joke get highly rated.

Giveaways are very generous, and i applaud the plus repping of them. But with some jokes, they can be such a lack of effort, but because people hate the threads discussion, they make a minimal joke, and then everyone is like +1!!!! + 1 Million for that comment! Lolzoorz. I just think that meaningful posts deserve rep. But that's just how i feel, and as the thread is all about uprepping/downrepping, i just wanted to share my views.

I agree with you but you shouldn't have said that, from now on people will know me as one of the not funny guys ... this should have been kept a secret for the next decade.
You just created a legion of angry-not-cool-kids-wannabe_uprepped.
But, again, I agree with you.

The irony of Vestin's post being highly repped just a few posts above this is making me laugh:)