Reputation spamming

The reason why you haven't looked at your reputation timeline before, is because it wasn't there before a few hours ago.

They're doing work on the software it seems. Not being a developer or moderator of the site, I don't know for sure*, but I would guess the -23 rating within five minutes was them transferring your old negative pointed posts before they transferred over your positive points. You also seemed to have gone from zero to 114 in six hours according to the timeline. They probably were importing the old rating into their new system, but lost the timestamps of those ratings in the process. It seems like they also were crawling the rated posts in the forum, and counted all the negatives before they counted all the positives.

My rating history also looks funky, starting out at -265, and climbing slowly over the past three months before balancing at zero and then jumping to 937 in a single leap.
I'm noticing a number of new additions to the site that are just funky right now because they are right now working on it. For example, many posts seem to have two separate ways to rate them (old way and new way, I guess?), each with different graphics. Some posts that I should be able to rate, I randomly cannot rate - it's probably still WIP.

Is your total rating (ignoring the WIP timeline) noticeably higher or lower than you remember it being two days ago? If not, I wouldn't worry.

*[size=2]But a simple thing like facts and knowledge isn't going to keep me from guessing wildly!

Thanks, I wasn't aware of that. I don't know whether it's related or not, so caution would dictate waiting a few days for things to settle down then look into it again. I don't know whether my total reputation has gone down or not because I was only made aware of it a few weeks back (behind the times I am, yes). Today was the first time I really investigated, possibly because a sparkly new feature caught my eye.

I can handle criticism (in moderation), but it seemed that the majority of the down-voted posts were pretty blameless (including 1 downvote on every post I made in a thread that I started, dated after the thread had died), and the 5 minute window looked suspicious to me.

We are actively working on the reputation system right now so the numbers will look a bit wonky for a little bit.. you should notice them higher than they were before we started though when we are finished. I figured this wouldn't be *too* bad to do on a sunday night before the start of the next work week. ;)

I guess you didn't count on tricky New Zealanders and their early rising ways. ;)

Oh yeah.. timezones.. forgot about that. =P

I has question. Why is it that we now have two ways to vote up someone?

Me is reputation point geek, me be happy

Anyway, my point was 646 now it's 919. Maybe it's just flipped upside down.

I has question. Why is it that we now have two ways to vote up someone?

Because the other buttons haven't been removed yet. They will be once MT has had some more time to tweak things probably.

I noticed that too, I jumped from 55 to 155 and then to 182 in a couple hours. At first I thought I posted something so helpful it got a hundred upvotes but then I noticed everyone else had 100+ reputation

I noticed that too, I jumped from 55 to 155 and then to 182 in a couple hours. At first I thought I posted something so helpful it got a hundred upvotes but then I noticed everyone else had 100+ reputation

You being on these boards is helpful, hence you get a +100 boost

Currently now you get +100 points for signing up, so nobody starts at zero.. our old system used to start at 1000 but to make up for the difference I added +100 to everyone. I also gave everyone a ratings boost based on their existing rating.. it's a one time scaling up to make some headroom between users for what the new system is going to be doing.

You can also play around with a new toy here.. but we haven't officially 'released' it by linking to it publicly.. it can be discovered though:
http://www.gamedev.net/sm/

Ah! Does this have anything to do with my being able to rate posts on some boards, but not others, or is that unrelated?

You cannot rate posts in the lounge. That was decided because people tend to get overly annoying if they can.

D'oh. Okay. That makes sense. Thanks for the heads-up.

I'm an Oscar Meyer Weiner Dog! <- See, you can't rate that

yea but we can remove it ;)

I recently looked at my reputation history (haven't ever done so before). I noticed that I received 23 vote downs within a single 5 minute period, on posts that seemed to have nothing particularly offensive or off-topic. That seems like griefer behaviour to me. Do the forums have any policies on that sort of thing?

I don't think your original issue was addressed, and the answer is yes - we do have a policy on this behavior and it's not tolerated. Targeting someone's rep directly through multiple down votes is not a proper use of the system you are only supposed to be voting on a person's individual replies. You're right in that down voting was made in threads and posts the person was not even directly involved in, over a very short period of time. I bumped you back up 20 points.

Thanks very much Gaiiden!

You cannot rate posts in the lounge. That was decided because people tend to get overly annoying if they can.

A good decision in my opinion. People shouldn't be rated just for talking generally. Contributions should be made in specific sections. If I am reading a topic and I have no idea what's going on or how to respond, then I don't. The implementation of user rating was a really good decision.

^^

Just wondering, is there a size restriction for signatures?

Don't get me wrong, I think those graphics look awesome and I don't mind them that much in this case, but I would hate to see a trend where signatures become bigger than the actual post, like you see on some boards. I think the old forum only allowed text, so it wasn't really much of an issue.

Just wondering, is there a size restriction for signatures?

This. No offense, TheGuardian, but your post about doubled in size with that image.

I know that you can click the X in the top right corner of the signature to hide a person's signature, but I generally like seeing people's signatures because sometimes they contain links to cool stuff/projects, so I'd prefer sane signatures over hiding signatures. Personally, I'm actually disappointed GD is allowing images in signatures (it destroys the general professional feel of the forums and makes them feel like a bunch of 13 year olds are competing over who has the coolest picture), but I don't think that'll change, so the least that can be asked for is some sanity.

[edit]

But maybe this is more suited for another thread, as we're derailing this one...