Reputation system..

[Cynette]

I will give positive rep for a wide variety of reasons, most often to someone just starting to post on CD. I will also, like Ed and Sam, give positive rep if I think someone has received negative rep unfairly. I'm more inclined to give neutral rep rather than negative rep if I think someone needs negative feedback on a post, but most often I'll send a pm to the poster.

I will look at rep in conjunction with post count prior to reacting to a post that is written in a fashion to be non-helpful to the CD community, but other than that, if you are a middle of the roader and building rep in a slow and steady fashion, you are good to go!

[Arefin Bari]

They are only dots...

... somebody had to say it.

[Kims Robot]

I agree with all above, but I also wanted to throw in an additional way that I use it. If I am looking for someone from a particular team to ask a question, I often search the members list, and then send a PM based on the reputation & role. Chances are if they have good reputation, they know what is going on with their team and/or can point me to whomever does.

But don't "worry" about the low rep. As long as you don't have red, 99.999% of the community will take your posts just as seriously as anyone elses.

[JohnBoucher]

It's a very effective method of keeping all the "Me too and I agrees" out of a thread. It also connects the community a little more. The more communication the better.

[JaneYoung]

The cool thing about CD is that there are so many wonderful people from the FIRST community who post or who have posted here, helping to build and sustain the CD community. Some of those wonderful people can become heroes and role models to you and when they appreciate a post that has been made and take the time to rep it, it can absolutely make your day. I've seen posts sprinkled throughout the years of participating in CD that are along the lines of, "Oh wow! I just got repped by Andy Baker!", and I know how much that meant to the person on the receiving end of that rep. It's along the lines of having the great role models stop and talk with you at a competition or send you a private message of encouragement or wisdom.

That's what's great about the reputation system. What is not great about it is that some people don't really take the time to understand that participating in CD can be a very valuable experience and they focus on trying to get those green dots as quickly as they can, instead of letting them accumulate naturally.

Humor and knowledge have been mentioned in this thread as reasons for giving positive rep. I think there are other good reasons as well, such as asking thoughtful questions or bringing the discussion back on topic when it has strayed off course.

Another thought is that everyone starts out with one green rep. We build our reputation from there, some more slowly than others. The key word is build.

Jane

[rachelholladay]

I completely agree with Jane.

I give green rep points if someone makes a really good point in the hopes that they will continue to make really good points (and therefore continue to teach me and others)

[ratdude747]

I use the system to give credit where credit is due but I personally don't like the system.

I am a super moderator over at badcaps.net forums and there they disabled the reputation system. At least at that forum it was somewhat useless; usually one could see how good someone is based on how they post and what they post. I along with a few members sometimes have very unpopular opinions; I know that we'd get spammed with negative rep over it.

Over here that doesn't seem to be as big of an issue although in the past I have gotten some negative rep for IMHO stupid things. One was for questioning the opinion of some who the person giving the rep was "above being questioned". Another was for making a point that the person giving the rep thought was "unhelpful". There are other thigns I've been given that were kinda dumb but that's beside the point.

The other thing I'd like to point out is that humans typically have a stronger reaction to negative feedback as oppossed to positive feedback. As my dad once told me, "it takes 100 'Atta-Boy!'s' to counteract one 'you [stink]!' " This why I rarely if ever give negative (or for that matter neutral) feedback.

[Andrew Schreiber]

Originally Posted by ratdude747

The other thing I'd like to point out is that humans typically have a stronger reaction to negative feedback as oppossed to positive feedback. As my dad once told me, "it takes 100 'Atta-Boy!'s' to counteract one 'you [stink]!' " This why I rarely if ever give negative (or for that matter neutral) feedback.

This is exactly why I rarely give negative rep unless the person is just generally being harassing or offensive and won't listen to anything else. I prefer neutral rep if they are being jerks and occasionally even use pos rep to ask them to chill out.

I'ma paraphrase my friend Santosh, the moment I start caring about dots on the internet I hope someone hits me.

[z_beeblebrox]

I haven't been giving (or receiving) much reputation, but I think that I'm going to start.

When reading a post, I don't pay much attention to reputation. Even someone with few posts and therefore a low reputation can contribute to a thread.

[artdutra04]

We don't agitate the dots.

[EricVanWyk]

I give negative reputation for repeat inaccurate or misleading posts.

Just mirroring everything said above already. Low rep doesn't mean anything unless you're in the red zone, which isn't good at all. Likewise, having the max rep doesn't mean you're Andy Baker (Unless you are Andy Baker, in which the previous statement becomes invalid).

All in all, a well thought-out and intelligent post benefits the community regardless of reputation (And it may even earn you some )

[Richard Wallace]

Originally Posted by SuperNerd256

... having the max rep doesn't mean you're Andy Baker (Unless you are Andy Baker, in which the previous statement becomes invalid).

It's like the old E.F. Hutton commercial ("... people listen"), when Andy Baker hits the green button, people notice.*

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*I only know of one instance when Andy hit the red button, and that was in a thread that went on far too long and became extremely unproductive.
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[LeelandS]

I personally subscribe to the idea that they are just dots in most cases. I tease certain friends because I have them and they don't, but it's only in jest and I don't actually think having a lot of dots makes me better than them. It's just a fun little tid-bit to look at when someone posts.

I will consider them if the person in question has one or more red dot, but even then, I don't base how much I listen to that person on what their reputation bar says. Every single person on Chief Delphi is entitled to their own opinion, so if the person in question said something and a group of people didn't like it and destroyed their reps, I won't disregard the person for having their own opinion, or just for having an opinion that differs from others (example: the mentor vs student built debate is a common CD topic. If someone speaks out against teams with "mentor built" robots and gets massacred in rep points, I won't disregard the person because their opinion differed from others and some people were offended by it).

I don't really make frequent use of giving reps, and I've never given negative reps. For the most part, I use it to thank people for saying something I found useful.

One thing I do note, is that CD users with full reputation bars are generally very reliable and noteworthy people (Karthik, JVN, Jim Zondag, Ether, etc, etc.). So if someone has a full bar of reps, I'll generally take that as a sign that they are a reliable and helpful person.

[Jon Stratis]

Reading this, I tried to think back... I can't remember really seeing anyone with a negative reputation posting. I may have just not noticed, or ignored those threads, or whatever.

So, I looked at the (sorted) member list. We have 402 members here with a negative reputation. Approx. 3500 members have actually accumulated some amount of reputation (more than 1 dot). We have 28,000+ total members on the members list (oddly, the CD stats puts that number at 44,000+...). Some interesting numbers.

Unfortunately, there's no option to "search posts by reputation" so we can see which posts received the most positive reputation, and which ones the most negative. Personally, I think it would be pretty interesting to see what the highest rated post of all time was on here!