Reputation system..

[techhelpbb]

Originally Posted by BigJ

For what its worth, I'd estimate that 1/2 to 3/4 of my karma are from jokes and sarcasm rather than useful information

That's one of those headaches of a rating posts and posters. It's hard to say whether a post was of a useful social or technical merit and to whom with what viewpoint. It's even harder to quantify the reasons of the person rating the post on a technical level. Worse one has no idea of the exposure of the reader to the topics in general so one doesn't know from how much experience of the forum quality they judge a post or poster.

It's a fun and fast way to let other people know you like something. On the negative side I'm not sure it's specific enough to deter anything. On the other side, as others have pointed out, leaving negative feedback knowing it is nebulous seems like the sort of thing that's just looking to polarize a situation.