Should we get rid of reputation up/down votes?

[lot378]

myBB reputation system is not an up/down or voting system yet it is being used like this and has been open to abuse for reasons of pettiness. This can cause moderators more work to do when users given a -REP for no reasonable cause to deal with and remove. There is a much better plugin that is available for myBB -- a thank you/like extension/plugin/mod.

If any doubt please vote to remove the reputation system - it'll mean the community is less toxic and removes the unnecessary work moderators have been doing.

Then the same process can be used as this one to lobby for the thanks/like plugin to be added.

See: https://community.mybb.com/mods.php?action=view&pid=360

[c_mmxx]

Voted for removal.

I strongly dislike any downvote system on any discussion platform, it's always used as a tool to abuse and silence. I think that should go no matter what other decision is taken regarding upvotes.

For upvotes, likes or thanks, I'd be happy to see them gone, but if they are to exist, I'd prefer they not be counted or scored in any way. I'd rather see natural conversations and discussion, rather than people spamming replies for their dopamine hit or points.

[LinAdmin2]

It's not a widespread problem.  We've actually had a number of new members giving negative feedback who didn't realise that it wasn't the normal way to do things here, and all but one (as far as I can tell) retracted the negative reputation points they had given.

You obviously have not seen the whole.

---

I vote option 3: we've seen that it's not the existence of downvotes that's the problem, it's the abuse of them.  Deal with the abuse, not the "reputation"

It might be difficult and time consuming to find out who started abuse.
Unless you have kind of a court this might rise to a different kind of abuse by mods.

[fire219]

Somewhere in the infinity of the the MyBB code, there must a "-1" that needs to get replaced with a "-0" so that giving a negative rating does not decrease the reputation count. How difficult can that be?

---

From Upload/reputation.php

Code:

// The user is trying to give a negative reputation, but negative reps have been disabled.
        if($mybb->get_input('reputation', MyBB::INPUT_INT) < 0 && $mybb->settings['negrep'] != 1)
        {
                $message = $lang->add_negative_disabled;
        if($mybb->input['nomodal'])
                {
                eval("\$error = \"".$templates->get("reputation_add_error_nomodal", 1, 0)."\";");
                }
                else
                {
                        eval("\$error = \"".$templates->get("reputation_add_error", 1, 0)."\";");
                }
                echo $error;
                exit;
        }

Are you sure that one can not disable giving negative reputations?


This 8 year old thread for an older mybb version https://community.mybb.com/thread-124436.html suggests

ACP>Configuration>settings>Reputation>Allow Negative Reputation>check no

I'm embarrassed to say I completely missed that setting when I was looking for it... 

I don't want to undermine this poll, but I think it's justified at this point to go head and disable downvotes.

[KC9UDX]

Undermined or not, we crested the hill and can see our destination: it is here.

[xmixahlx]

disabling downvotes makes sense to me, too. thanks Ghost for digging that up.

[natasha]

As per discussion in another thread, I'd like the community's input on whether we should remove users ability to up/down "reputation".
It appears that this system has been abused recently.

When I look at your "480" reputation, I see 480 "thank you"s. I think that if the system has been abused, then the abuser should lose the privilege or ability to modify reputation.

That's my minor opinion =)

Agree. Moreover, reputation also gives you an idea if the advice you are getting from someone is from a person who is respected in the forum or from a troublemaker, etc

It is actually helpful. Otherwise, let's remove the number of posts, the joining day, and even the user name.

As said by others, if someone is using downvoting just to attack others, that person should be removed.

If the community grows, and 0.001% of users are a pain, then moderators should do their work. If you need moderators, I am sure you can find volunteers. Sure, you would pick people with a high reputation... ha!

[daniel]

You cannot take positive votes out. Is a nice way to show you really thank people!

Removing downvoting should be ok, although sometimes it might alert from destructive users

[KC9UDX]

It's done. Downvoting h has been turned off.

[Djhg2000]

I vote option 3: we've seen that it's not the existence of downvotes that's the problem, it's the abuse of them.  Deal with the abuse, not the "reputation"

It might be difficult and time consuming to find out who started abuse.
Unless you have kind of a court this might rise to a different kind of abuse by mods.

Honestly, if we were to have "abuse by mods" then I think the vote counters would be the least of our issues. We need to be able to trust the mods no matter which features we have so I don't think that discussion belongs in this particular thread.

Back to the topic; with the disabling of downvotes, does that imply old downvotes are retroactively null and void, or will they stick around (hidden?) in case we enable them again?