In any online social system ratings are extremely important way of engaging people with their community as its the primary way to give simple feedback to members.

For example I saw a difficult post with some great replies, I think i should be able to very quickly give a "+1" to that user, or a -1 to the poster.

Curiously enough the 'rate' system we have did allow me to do the -1, but not the +1 (though I suspect a bug).
But more importantly, I think the system is too hard to use. It now requires a reason and if I give a -1 to a person I don't think this should be visible to all (even without login).

Please do some research on what other successful communities do, how they provide feedback and encouragement through a rating system. And implement it here

Um, I can pretty much see your +1... But anyway, we are upgrading very soon, so this probably will be fixed.
About hiding the -1's, it sounds reasonable to me. So, noted

The forums software complained that "good post" was not a good reason, so I wrote more after posting here.

Basically, it should be more painless to give credit. I think the reputation is zero on most users and thats a shame.

zander wrote:Basically, it should be more painless to give credit. I think the reputation is zero on most users and thats a shame.

A good startig point for research on this matter and food for thought is this presentation:
http://www.slideshare.net/amyjokim/putt ... -functiona

Basically, it should be more painless to give credit. I think the reputation is zero on most users and thats a shame.

We did have an ajax based "thanks" system, that would give you a thank button next to those "reply" and "report" buttons below the message. But looking into the database, we found that it was largely unused and it was expensive from db POV, so we decided to remove it.

We will definitely see if there can be easier ways of adding a thanks, or something..

The reputation system now uses ajax. Also, negative reputation is now visible to only the user who gave it and to the receiver him/herself. Other just see the count.