[Donut]

Originally Posted by Jon Stratis

Just a quick question... How much do people pay attention to rep? I have to be completely honest - I didn't even notice it for the first couple of years, and after I did I didn't really care. When I read posts, I don't look at the rep when evaluating the post. I only look at my own rep every few months to make sure I'm not doing something stupid that people don't like.

Almost never, in my case. I've given out a total of 64 rep points in the 8 years I've been using CD. To be honest I don't see the benefit of the rep system, negative rep can drive away users that are new or hold views that are against the grain while I don't think positive rep causes us to retain users that would otherwise lose interest.

On the note of threads in the Off-topic forum, threads such as the Brony thread generating "noise" isn't a bad thing. Which would you rather have, users continuing to use CD and building relationships with each other even if the discussion isn't about robots and FIRST 24/7, or CD sitting inactive because it is a place only for "serious business"? Maybe it's just because I think Bronyism and internet meme culture is hilarious but I prefer the former. Sometimes a user needs some silly threads or outside interest discussion to keep them coming back to CD, and that gives them the chance to see other threads elsewhere in the forums that may catch their interest and spark a bit of inspiration. You don't have to see the Off-Topic threads either, use the "Recent Posts Config." under the User Control Panel to only view the forums you think are worth seeing and set the threads shown number to something absurdly high. That's what I do and filter out half the site because I've figured out that I almost never contribute anything to sub-forums like Off-topic, CAD, the Rumor Mill, etc. It allows me to quickly get up to speed on CD without having to leave the main portal.