[Slightly Offtopic] One thing that's always bugged me is the Rep system. I've had a great experience with it, but not everyone has. I've seen a number of cases where someone has posted on a sensitive topic and just didn't word it delicately enough. 100 negative reps later, they come back and attempt to fix it. However, 100 negative reps are very upsetting, and often ends up angering the user more. I make two propositions:
1) Allow a maximum of 5 or 10 negative reps PER POST. This will get the point across well enough, but ensures that it is not too damaging. It also means that "instigators" (those who make multiple offending posts) can still be penalized heavily, hopefully notifying them that their conduct is unacceptable. Also, if someone receives the maximum negative reps for a post, they should be notified similar Billfred's suggestion in
this thread
2) If someone has recieved more than a specified number (like 30 or 40) negative reps in the past 24 hours, their account is temporarily suspended (eg. for the next 24 hours). This makes it so that they have time to "cool off", and could possibly mitigate some of the "hot" threads we see. Multiple temporary bans could be grounds for a longer term ban and/or account deletion. Because of the way the current rep system works, it should be fairly hard to abuse this (it would require a lot of offended peple to cause a temporary ban).
Please note that these suggestions have not been fully thought through, and probably have many problems. They may have already been suggested in one way or another. They're just some ideas for preventing some problems that i've seen lately. [/Slightly Offtopic]