[reina]

This seems to be a bit of an unpopular opinion, but here we go.

The reputation system is not used to convey one's agreement with the contents of a post. It is used to reward or punish the people making those posts. When the majority of the people participating in a thread are part of a (hypothetical, so don't bitch at me about what's going on that caused this) angry mob, there is no agreeing or disagreeing with a person's stance. There is only punishing or rewarding them as much as you, as the majority, can. As it just so happens, the hypothetical angry mob always seems to have a high number of likes while the targets have a high number of dislikes.

The stances don't change. You only need to like one post to show your agreement. These dogpile threads are a circle jerk of reputation where people come up with the worst possible way to put everything so that those who are unfamiliar with the situation will naturally go along with the majority, regardless of evidence or context. The targets of these threads are then left to handle an entire angry mob on their own, with the mob growing due to the circle jerk so that they can jump in on the reputation wagon.

Many of you who have commented in disagreement with the decision to disable rep are not upset that you have lost a form of communication. You are upset that you've lost a major part of what makes these dogpile threads so venomous. Some of you need to get off of your "our voices matter and we need to keep the forums clean" high horse when your entire reason for defending the reputation system is the fact that you want to devalue someone else's words and get some dopamine from those +1s.

[JesseTheUndeadCowboy]

The angry mob part yeah…… tbh I can see what Reina means by that. It does come across that way sometimes I will admit.  Of course I don’t think the rep system is always used for that. There are times where it was actually used to agree with contents of a post. It wasn’t always used by a angry mob so to speak. Reina is probably also right that you only need to like one persons post to show your agreement in a thread I will admit. Since most of the time it is sometimes repetitive points said over and over. So yeah Reina I will admit you have some good points most likely in regards to that.

[chelllman]

Why don't we just have reputation as an "opt-in" feature that is default off on a user's profile?  Posts by users with reputation on can be +/-, and those with it off cannot.

[happy]

As someone who has been a "dogpiler" and "dogpilee" i would like to give my perspective. I had my rep plummeted everything i posted regardless the content was mass -10ed by the ttt community a couple years ago and was accused of "sucking dick for a promotion".

I feel like what happened recently was different it wasn't merely a disagreement with the majority. It was a toxic player that bent rules to his favor and ran to staff when others did it as well. He constantly picked fights then cried when he got shot for it. He wasn't -1ed for disagreement he was-1ed for refusing to take any accountability for his own actions.

[Linfalas]

As someone who has been a "dogpiler" and "dogpilee" i would like to give my perspective. I had my rep plummeted everything i posted regardless the content was mass -10ed by the ttt community a couple years ago and was accused of "sucking dick for a promotion".

I feel like what happened recently was different it wasn't merely a disagreement with the majority. It was a toxic player that bent rules to his favor and ran to staff when others did it as well. He constantly picked fights then cried when he got shot for it. He wasn't -1ed for disagreement he was-1ed for refusing to take any accountability for his own actions.

+1 this tbh.... it has been a miserable few weeks....

[reina]

As someone who has been a "dogpiler" and "dogpilee" i would like to give my perspective. I had my rep plummeted everything i posted regardless the content was mass -10ed by the ttt community a couple years ago and was accused of "sucking dick for a promotion".

I feel like what happened recently was different it wasn't merely a disagreement with the majority. It was a toxic player that bent rules to his favor and ran to staff when others did it as well. He constantly picked fights then cried when he got shot for it. He wasn't -1ed for disagreement he was-1ed for refusing to take any accountability for his own actions.

I realize this deviates a bit from the core point of the thread, so I won't talk about the actual drama past this one post. 

The ones under fire in dogpile posts are often not the ones who actually did anything. In reference to the most recent one (not the ban request), Phoenix was not the core point of that thread. If they were, those concerns would have been discussed with those who made the decision. A post like that is clearly a call to action directed towards community members, not staff members. The purpose is to show everyone else what you're upset about because the actual goal is to put on display the behavior of those with whom you're annoyed, not those who have broken the rules. 

That is the backbone of a callout post. People are annoyed with someone so they want to create a sort of informal petition to say to that person, "I'm right, you're a piece of shit, and look at all these people who agree with me." Reputation only serves as another tool to show the subject of the post how many people aren't on their side. It emphasizes the fact that the post is going to be 20 people running a train on them until they give in and do what the majority wants.

[Wrong]

rep has literally never mattered, ever, it doesn't prevent you from posting or give you extra privileges. the value of it is exactly what you ascribe to it yourself. i'm okay with it being gone (or being here) because it's pretty irrelevant. the only time I've ever personally used it was when I would +1  someone who posted pretty much exactly what I wanted to post, with a rare -1 here and there for exceptionally bad posts

[^aethy]

Disable -rep and make total count private.

There is your fix

[Darkkran]

I'm a narcissist, and I approve this removal.

[Mother Nuru.]

I'm going to have to point out for those of you that missed it. Reina's explanation is PERFECT for this. It isn't always used in this way and we aren't saying it is. But since it's a repeated cycle of people being shitty with it, it's better to remove it until something is figured out than help build up the issue with reputation. Maybe it'll come back. Maybe it won't.

I'm also all for the suggestion of the reactions, varying that was suggested. Thats better. But even better than that suggestion was the one for reasoning. It'd be easy to weed through those shitposting likes etc etc. But Overall, truly without reputation, the world isn't ending, just for those that like to see things explode etc. Now people have more incentive to ACTUALLY join in conversation. I like it this way. I hope it stays gone, but if not, one of these two suggestions are best in place of current reputation system.

TL;DR Version: Get your rocks off on something else than internet points that help grow a hate system.