[George1902]

Ken, I don't see the negative side to the reputation system at all.

Reputation: (n) overall quality or character as seen or judged by the people

The reputaion system will end up working like College Football's BCS. No one's system for giving out rep points will be perfect, but in the end, all of the inadequacies will cancel out.

For example, Let's say Angela, Billy, Chris, and Donna are all CD users who actively participate in the reputaion system. Their criteria are as follows:

Angela hates reading long posts, so she gives people a positive if they say their piece quickly and a negative if they take up too much space.

Billy doesn't like it when threads get off topic. His rating system gives positives to people whose posts are clear an on topic and negative to people whose posts are off topic or convoluted.

Chris thinks both Angela and Billy have great ideas and uses a hybrid of those two systems. Short, to the point posts get positives. Long, off-topic posts get negatives.

Finally, Donna doesn't really feel like thinking to hard about the whole reputation thing. She gives positives to the people she likes and negatives to the people she doesn't like.

None of these systems are wrong. All of them take into account the meaning of "reputation" in some form. There will be dozens of people like Angela, Billy, Chris, and Donna on CD. There will also be plenty of crazy ways people use to give rep points. All of these methods will average together to form a really great system.

Personally, I'll give a post a positive if my left eyebrow twitches while reading it and a negative if my right eyebrow twitches.