Curbing Slight Reputation (Skins/Thumbs Up) Abuse

[iacas]

While I'm glad that people have been making more use of the "thumbs up" (reputation) system to give people "skins," I've seen a fair amount of posts given thumbs up which do not meet the criteria laid out in the article :

To hand out positive reputation, which I am encouraging all members to do when they encounter a post that makes a well-reasoned point or goes above and beyond to provide great content, you simply click this button at the bottom of their post: . You'll be prompted to leave a comment - which I strongly encourage everyone to do - and your positive reputation will be added. After you post, your comment and "thumbs up" vote will be available for others to see and a count will be added to the right of the graphic.

You should not click the thumbs up button for posts simply because you agree with them unless they're also a high-quality post. In other words, please do not treat "thumbs up" like Facebook "Likes" or just "thumb up" posts with which you agree or which just make a joke but provide little in the way of content. We're not trying to identify people who think like others, we're trying to use reputation to identify those who post quality content.

For example, these types of posts almost NEVER warrant a thumbs up:

• A simple posting of a YouTube video.*
• A one-liner or frankly any post of fewer than 50 words or so.
• A smartass comment or one that is mean to another person (whether a member or not).
• A post of nothing but a meme picture as a response to a comment.

Yet all of these have gotten thumbs up in the past few days. I've since deleted the skins I've seen (I'm sure I've missed some).

Here's a clue. If the comment you're strongly encouraged to leave with your thumbs up is of the variety like "I agree" or "haha" or "funny" or something, then it was probably a mistake to click the thumbs up icon.

Reputation and "Skins" don't play a huge role in The Sand Trap, but that's not to say they will never, and I'd urge everyone to be a bit more cautious about doling it out. Simultaneously, I'd like to encourage more people to GIVE reputation to WORTHY posts. Basically, flip the script a little bit - less thumbs up in a "Facebook" like fashion, more to well reasoned, thoughtful posts - even if you disagree with the post, you can value the content and think that the post is "good content."

Thank you.

* One of the exceptions would obviously include a post which contained a video where the video was original content created by the poster.