I see the rep system as an important part of GC. Ive thought this for a long, long time. Rep = Trust in my opinion. When you give someone rep, you are handing out trust. Because once someone earns enough, they can also give it. But if these people are not trustworthy, why should they give out rep? When you see someone with all the bars, you know you are dealing with someone who knows their shit, and doesnt start shit. If it wasnt for the rep system, I think you might see a more rampant forum in terms of hostility and disrespect. I recieved a -rep on a post that had no reason to be given rep, positive or negative. The message I recieved with it was just a period. They had not even posted in the thread. Also, considering that this person probably does not even smoke, there was no reason for them to be in the seasoned tokers section, handing out -rep. This was from someone who had not deserved any rep they had recieved in my opinion, and obviously is too immature to even use the rep system. So. My solution to the problem is to simply make rep reportable. Whether it be directly from the rep box, or indirectly through PM to 2-3 rep specific mods. If a questionable rep comes up. These mods can look at the post, look at the message, and look at the rep given. If it is abuse of the rep system. The giver of the rep will recieve a large deduction in their rep, AND regardless of how high their rep is, be suspended from giving or recieving rep for at least 3-5 days. Also, +rep and -rep should both require messages. The ability for a mod to come in and look at the messages should help keep people from posting nonsense, periods, or just no message in general. Thats my idea. Take it or leave it.
I just see it as an arbitrary internet rating system that doesn't have any kind of importance on anything whatsoever, so I just ignore it. I will rep somebody if something is funny though, big fan of humor.
In essence I also think its a stupid childish thing. On the other hand, it does give credit where credit is due, and it says to everyone else, you can expect only the best from me. Its just a shame that it puts forth a loophole in the rules sometimes, and gives non trustworthy people the ability to give or take away rep from people, who may not have deserved it.
As far as I know, there is no way to make the rep system easily reportable. Which is one of the big problems with it. The administrator is the only one with enough access to sufficiently deal with abuse of the reputation system, which leaves one person to deal with every single instance of reputation abuse on these entire (very busy) forums. Considering she's the administrator and also has a shit ton of other things to deal with, it's just a huge hassle (I would assume, anyway ). Which is part of why, as she has said, the rep system will likely be undergoing some changes soon. Whether that means eliminating it entirely or removing the ability to give negative rep or some other solution, we shall see.
You CAN report rep already....RMJL handles rep abuse. You just send her a PM in regards to which post was rep abused and then she handles it. Everytime I've had to deal with it she takes care of it fairly quickly. The rep system is fun....I use it on a daily basis. There will always be some sort of abuse, with anything really.
One of the other forums I'm on has a "heady point" system (I know, lame), but it just uses a +/- system with no comments and no limitations on how many points you can give to who and whether or not you can actually give something other than a neutral rep based on how many points you have. It's still kinda dumb, but I really don't need to have a little comment next to why someone thinks I deserved something. I know I'm still a relative newbie around here, but I have dealt with some serious forum meltdown issues over this exact same kind of thing and played hands in the revamping of forum features such as this. If I were to pick out a thing about the rep system that I really don't like is the neutral rep thing. Many times when I rep someone, whether positive or negative, I usually get a message from that person asking if it was + or -. I guess that it's a preventative troll method, but it is confusing as hell. But yea, keep it, ditch it, whatever. No skin off my back.
In reference to an earlier post...no, I do not take rep abuse reports any longer. If vB wants to implement a report function in a future update, that'll be great. Until then, I no longer deal with rep abuse. Which is one reason why, if anything, the ability to give negative rep should no longer exist here.