Some reputation suggestions

[Anonymous IPB User]

It seems the current reputation system is easily abused and I wanted to make a suggestion: A setting to allow a member to only rep the same member every x number of times and make them have to spread the reputation around before being able to rep the same member again. Another way of accomplishing the same thing is having a setting so that you can make a member wait x amount of time before being able to rep the same member again. Just thought I would throw these out there.

[jimdahl]

I think an option like this is very important.

The problem with the current system is that a small group of people determined to use all their rep opportunities to move a particular person can dramatically outweigh the natural organic repping that person receives (at least on my board).

It seems like this system was really designed for post-level reputation (e.g. for Slashdot-style filtering) but then decided to also tally the post-level rep to create user reputation. Because a person's reputation is simply the sum of the rep of all of their posts, it's easy for someone to pump themselves up (having a small group of supporters rep their posts up over and over) or exercise a vendetta to knock someone down.

The OP is right that the solution is to have some limit to the amount one person can move another person's reputation.

My idea would be to count only the aggregate of my rep of your posts toward your personal rep (e.g. if of the rep I've given your posts, 75% is positive and 25% negative, call my contribution to your rep +.75). This would make each person's rep the true average view of the community (and wouldn't suffer from the exponential growth of everyone toward infinity that some other rep systems suffer from).