Except when you have a difference of opinion and that person decides to
start dreping and all his friends help.That is an unfair situation and then people
decide or say ''Hey this prick's a troll''.Everyone has a right to an opinion without
being abused or picked on,and please don't tell me this doesn't happen.
And because you stand up for what you believe in,you lose any decent respect
you may have had.
The sooner they get rid of rep system the better.

Okay, I think we're on the same page here. -laughs-

I also think that as it stands, the rep system is a broken joke. Easily exploited, easily manipulated, it's not even close to a good way to verify someone's ultimate credibility in the forum.

I was saying that I disregard rep scores and go by how the person chooses to behave.

Not going to tell you that situations like what you mentioned don't happen. They always do and they always will.
People will generally argue rather than discuss. Just how people are.

Yep,same page.A person can be genuine and helpful,but then have a (war debate)
with someone and that will always stay in people's minds.Not the being helpful,but
the war.Facts are Facts.

How is it any way unfair? It's not like a low or high rep affects anything at all. It doesn't stop you from posting or take away your games. A low forum rep isn't going to lower your chances of getting a job, or getting into college or finding your happiness in life. It is as insignificant as toenail clippings. It really seems the only people who really care about rep are the same people who continually do unpopular things on the forums. The solution for those people is simple: if the rep number is that important to you, don't be a dick and rep will take care of itself.

And no, you do not have the right to an opinion without consequences. That's the double-edged sword of free speech. Sure you have the right to say or believe whatever you want, but if you choose to express that publicly, everyone else has the equal right to express their disagreement with you. Just like in life, an unpopular opinion expressed publicly is going to cause the public to lose respect for you, whether or not GOG has the rep system. Right now, the easiest way to express that disagreement on GOG is to just hit that minus button. That's why I feel they should keep the ability to up or down vote individual posts, just don't tie it to some arbitrary and ultimately meaningless "forum score". It really does cause more problems than it solves, though I don't blame that on the system, but rather the overly important significance some users apply to it.

No guys, the problem is not the rep.. it's the rep abuse through alts.
Without those, the system would work a bit better.

With no rep at all, instead, a new scammer would be indistinguishable from an old good gogger.
Nobody remembers ALL the valid members.. just a few ones.

My opinion still stands,so you've wasted your time.
Okay,so they need some other form of good standing in forum from bad standing.

As does mine. Free speech at work, never a waste of time.

Oh, you're not alone. But apparently, that makes both of us the unholy spawns of Stalin and Ghengis Khan.

Much better than a silly, easily abused forum score system would be some simple way to search for the users forum activity. Have clicking on a name link to the person's recent posts, add searching by user or something like that. Taking a butcher's at a person's activity would be a thousand times more usefull than the rep number is now.

The problem is, most people seem to think there are only two possible options that are extreme opposites: zero moderation or a dictatorship. There is actually a middle ground of reasonable but firm moderation that enforces the rules as equally and fairly as possible. There will never be perfect moderation and mistakes will be made, but that does not mean active moderation should be taken off the table as the current methods no longer work and something must be done.

Possibly,but doing that you could miss that members negatives (war debates).

Just wanted to say that i appreciate your posts, well written and it always nails it.

Thanks, but you give me too much credit. I have had my fair share of regrettable posts on GOG over the last 7 years. Fortunately GOG doesn't show post history, so a lot of people don't know that. :)

We agree on this one, I'm not a fan of "psycho chainsaw" moderation, but the most friendly and easy-going forums I know owe much of it to their mod teams. Even in small comunities like French TTRPG forums, having someone who sometimes reminds everyone that there are rules and that we are supposed to have a civilized behaviour is useful. Defuses things BEFORE they turn ugly, and before the banhammer becomes necessary.

I think it actually more comes out of bitterness and obsession that "Person X's rep is higher than mine even though I think I helped out more people and have been a member as long as they have". For example, if I believe I'm the greatest thing for this forum since System Shock 2, and someone else has higher a rep score/social reputation than I (even though they had the same join date as I did, or even joined later), then in my mind, it had to be because those people were cheating or gaming the system... (Regardless of anything I actually did/didn't do to warrant a poor reputation.)

I don't doubt that people do/have done/are doing that, but we've also seen many giveaways here that are exceedingly generous, at extensive cost to the person hosting it. Some of them come with reasons rooted in personal stories and experiences that come across as genuine and sincere (of course, they could also be fake, too). Sure, some of them have likely been to get rid of old codes, but I personally don't believe that they were done solely for the reason of gaining rep.

And in the end, even if they were, the person hosting it still giving back to the community. If a person really were focused on getting +rep, they could still easily (and more cheaply) game the system to get it through alts.

I hear the oral examinations in your class are quite uplifting. Some would even say, climactic.