HGiles: Most social correction mechanisms are dumb, and people get a bad reputation for things that are silly. I'm kind of surprised you hadn't learned this already. I like the rep system here because it's basically a choice whether or not it matters. There's no important functionality tied to it, and no active moderators to make mountains out of molehills, so saying unpopular things can't impact you unless you decide to worry about your rep.
StingingVelvet: Like I said, I never cared until recently. I don't know why but losing a ton of rep for talking about an MMO and nothing else kind of just... pissed me off, I guess? Even though I don't care about the number it just annoyed me for some reason that a ton of people clicked that button simply because I said I was enjoying a particular game.
I'll go back to not caring about it in a few days, but... I don't know, that just rubbed me the wrong way. Even if you consider it a "like/dislike" system, maybe shy away from clicking dislike on someone just because they enjoy a game you did not.
I signed out of my e-mail once and saw an ad telling me several people had just unfriended me. It felt a little weird, even hurtful for just a second. The one right before my head could remind me I don't have any friends, or accounts on social networks to be unfriended by.
People don't like not being fully accepted. Even if they are total dicks, they just don't like it. People can say "don't care about it", or even "I don't care about it" but they will/do. There is no way out of it - we like to be liked.
I personally see that button as a worst case scenario. Something has to be quite wrong to push it. Feels kind of wrong to be free and loose about it like it was a button on Pandora or Spotify or something. I get some people may not feel that way, but I do think it is fair to say that that button should be used to down rate an individual post, and isn't there to go on private, petty revenge sprees. Leave the problem at the post, and move on. Do some people deserve more, or asking for more? Sure, but I don't know that anything is improved by down voting one post because of something in another.
IF, people really are getting so worked up over something someone said a day, a week, heaven forbid a month before, then I really don't think that person is displaying any better character traits than the person they have chosen to go after.
We don't get to click off in to groups to ignore personalities we don't like in a forum. Instead we can either tolerate personalities we don't like and make this an open place, or we can try and run out everyone we don't like which doesn't work. We will probably try it, but just end up making these forums the same unfriendly, bad tempered unwelcome mat much of the rest of the Internet is.
