I, really, have no idea what you said but, based on some of your postings which I have read, it must make sense. I'm curious as to why your reputation is Honored? IMO you, too, should be Exalted. I enjoy reading your postings. Seeing that I'm, somewhat, new to this, maybe you could explain how someone goes from Green Help to Exalted, Neutral to Friendly/Unfriendly, etc.. Thanx.
[boat]
Sure --
The reputation system here on the board was originally part of the "Points" system. The forum software originally counted points based on a members postings, and in some cases, points would be counted if posts were deleted, or member suspended. But the main source of the points came from member posts. About 2 years ago, I pushed a major upgrade to the software that runs MCW. In that update, the authors made a change that turned points into a system that members themselves could manipulate. But the initial 'starting number' was left over from the old points.
The new system, called "Reputation" can actually be influenced by members. Next to each member's name in a post will be a + and a - symbol. If you click the plus on a post that is very relevant, or useful, that person who got "plus-ed" was given a reputation point. The same goes for a negative post. BUT - this system also has some checks in place. Members who have lower reputation will not be able do down-vote very much on another member. All registered members can up-vote a post. Additional to that, a member can only up-vote another member once per post - this helps keep the system 'fair' by blocking people from multiple down-vote or up-vote attacks. Basically, it's like a "Like and Dislike" button, that has 'value' to a member's reputation. The difference between 'up-voting' a reputation and 'liking' a post is that reputation votes are anonymous and affect the points value of a member - vs. liking a post is not anonymous and you cannot "dislike" a post (you can reverse a "like" but it can't be 'disliked').
We had (and still do) have the option to reset the member reputations, but when I performed the upgrade, and scanned the user records, it seemed that for the most part (not entirely) the points -> reputation conversion was fairly accurate. Members who had a high level of posts had a higher points/reputation average than members who didn't post very often. Additional to that, members who had caused more trouble than others did have lower points numbers which carried over as well. I will be the first to admit the numbers are not 100% accurate to a member's reputation, but they are pretty close on average. I think now that the cat is out of the bag on this one though, we may start to see some changes there.
The whole system was built for sites who have a high amount of 'valuable information' posted, but also have high member turnover. So it was designed to aid new members or 'outside' visitors to gauge the information they read posted by someone based on their reputation. In the case here, there are some members who should have a very high reputation, such as Flamo and a few others - who are very very knowledgeable about this industry. Unfortunately, when we first moved the forums about 12 years ago, the original software did not count 'points'. Many members remember that those years were the 'big days' of this forum - when we would see over a million visitors a month, and an average of 10-20 fresh topics a day. Since the forum has slowed down so much over the last couple years, the reputation/points don't truly reflect the best numbers for some of our veteran members. Mine is as high as it is mainly due to my post count (same goes for some other members) even if their reputation is not as good as others --