I agree with those who have said that the negative rating was really helpful for marking incorrect information, and differentiating posts quickly and easily. Instead of like / dislike, why not "agree / disagree", since that doesn't have the same emotional connotations. This should largely reduce the view that some users are "being picked on" that you're trying to prevent.

As a further step, I think the user rating should be a ratio of posts with net agreement to posts with net disagreement. That way things aren't affected by the number of ratings on just one post, but on overall helpfulness of all that users posts. That way you can quickly see whether someone's likely to be right or not, but one bad post alone doesn't cripple their reputation. I'd suggest displaying one number, with 0.0 meaning a balance of positive / negative posts, -1.0 as all negative posts, and 1.0 as all positive posts. For example with 300 posts, of which 47 are uprated, 5 are downrated, and the rest are neutral, someone's score would be: 47 / 300 - 5 / 300 = 0.14

I disliked the idea that one could smack a post because they have a distaste for it or disagree with it. I don't know that I've seen it, but...

There's also the possibility that it can be interpreted. I know they're anonymous, but for example there's a thread in another section that's just me and one other person conversing.

A 3rd party smacked one of his posts - and maybe it was slightly smackworthy - but since nobody else is participating it kind of looks like I did it. I didn't say anything, but you know what I mean right?

I'm gonna second the unlike thing. If we're this concerned with reps, we should have something for mis-clicks. I accidentally clicked downrate on someone's post elsewhere - I don't know why, my head wasn't sharp and I was fidgeting with the mouse - then discovered I couldn't undo it. So I had to say so and then other folks bumped the post back up. Embarrassing.

On that note, the old GDnet weighted the influence of a reputation bump by the rep of the bumper. Why not do that?

[quote name='Alpha_ProgDes' timestamp='1310858450' post='4836180']Even with the positive-only rating no one is going to spam post to just to get a higher reputation.

You're taking that too literally.

Let's say that only 1% of your posts get a 'like' click. That means that your 'reputation' is just [font="Courier New"]postCount*0.01[/font].
Going by this formula, then being on the site longer and having more posts means a higher 'reputation' -- it's just a scaled post count.

The actual interesting information (the scaling factor 0.01) is lost, along with the measure of unhelpful posts... I can be a complete jerk 99% of the time, but as long as I still post helpful information for that 1% of the time, my 'reputation' will still increase at the exact same rate.
[/quote]

If you divide your reputation by postCount, yes.. there will always be a mathematical relation and that number means nothing because it will never be the same as everyone elses. But more importantly, there is nothing wrong with having a higher reputation with no cap. From my viewpoint I can call millionaires rich just as much as billionaires are rich.. I know when people have a lot of money. So in comparison, not having an upper limit on reputation doesn't mean people can't tell a number is high.

And to be fair, if you are a complete jerk the community does have meta-moderation power in their ability to report posts to a moderator. It's been done hundreds of times so far and users can be warned, suspended temporarily, and even banned. I'd bet you couldn't get away with being a jerk 99% of the time.

Ah, I see the bit about weighted reps has already been answered. Sorry.