Let's all pause this conversation, read my blog post, and then come back.

Well, I read your blog post, so...

I like the new site layout. The old one just looked old and clunky. This one appears far more organized and clean. I still would like to left click on a link and have it open in a new tab, but seeing as how that suggestion was so vehemently opposed...

I just noticed that I only have eight posts... That's not right...

If a person is conducting themselves in a way that hurts the community, then yes it should be the moderators job to step in. That's a large portion of their responsibility; to moderate. Entirely self moderated communities are usually trash because the community very rarely holds itself as accountable as a moderator holds themselves

No one is suggesting that the community be completely self moderated, however at the same time I maintain that the community should be able to indicate to someone that they are stepping outside of what the community wants.

The old rating system was brought in towards the start of 2005, some years before you joined it would seem, and I recall a very quick improvement in the overall quality of the forums as suddenly both positive and negative actions had some form of recourse from the community. This was a good thing, this has now been removed. As a student of human nature this worries me frankly.

As a moderator I see it as my job to control the more extreme problems which happen (such as when two people get into a proper slagging match), maybe a quite word to steer people back onto topic from time to time and maintain threads with regards to stripping out pointless or extreme posts which aren't helpful.

I don't see it as my job to try to enforce some sort of level of community behaviour (if only because my idea of what is acceptable probably doesn't match the same view held by many others) aside from the aforementioned 'extreme' cases.

No one is suggesting that the community be completely self moderated, however at the same time I maintain that the community should be able to indicate to someone that they are stepping outside of what the community wants.

If only there were a way for people to tell people that they were carrying themselves poorly. Perhaps this feature could be implemented in such a way that the thing that offended them could be included in how the offenders are told so they know specifically what was said. Perhaps there could even be a link to the original post in that so they can go back and look in context. To make sure they really feel the impact you could make it visible to the whole community. It should of course be closely tied somehow, perhaps it could exist in the same thread as the original post.

If only there were some way to have this sort of functionality in the new system!

The old rating system was brought in towards the start of 2005, some years before you joined it would seem, and I recall a very quick improvement in the overall quality of the forums as suddenly both positive and negative actions had some form of recourse from the community. This was a good thing, this has now been removed. As a student of human nature this worries me frankly.

Again it comes down to what you want the reputation to signify. Do you want it to be a number to stick on how agreeable and popular you are, which no person past high school should care about, or do you want a number that signifies how helpful or technically inclined you are, which isn't well served by negative feedback outside of moderation in extreme situations.

It said quite plainly in the "rate this user" dialogue what it meant. I am sorry that so many people don't read the dialogue before clicking it or assume that it means something that it isn't meant to.

You're right. It very clearly said something along the lines of "helpful or friendly" which is not, at all, just the "technical competence" that you have mentioned.

Overall, I basically agree with MikeP. While I do like the concept of rating posts rather than users, I feel like not being able to rate posts DOWN is, overall, a detriment to the community in my opinion.

Frankly I couldn't care less about whether or not post votes influence reputation, but the inability to vote stuff down is stupid. At the very least you should be able to correct your own mistakes or change your damn mind.