Is the rep & points thing fair?

" Shouldn't there be the opposite to 'Thanks' - such as 'Thumps'"

Another forum I visit has "Applaud" and "Smite"


I tried that, but I only get the option to "approve this post", which is a bit one-sided!

I like the idea of scoring, voting, or approving a post. For a newbie who sees a post, and doesn't know whether to trust it or not (or, indeed, whether to trust the poster, or not), some sort of rating is helpful.

My gripe is the amount of space allocated to describing that Thanks have been given, by whom, when, etc. etc. etc. It spreads out the posts and makes it slower for people to review, and contribute. Not a problem if you only read one thread a day, more of an issue when you try to contribute more

 

" Trouble with it is, it can be abused."

Dunno whether it solves the problem, or not, but another site I use requires that you have more than 50 posts before you can use the "Approve/Disapprove" tool. Seems a reasonable compromise to me, but I've never tried to Moderate a forum.

 

As I said!

Good point but a forum I was on also removed it because people were using it to flame/harass others which got very nasty.