What is "Rep" and how do I use it?

This is to answer the question of what is "Rep"? "Rep" short for Reputation. Represents the reputation that you have in this community. The more you have the more people have liked what you posted whether it was a nice map, a great comment, or helpful information. Basically whatever you feel has been worthy of increasing another posters reputation.

If you look at the bottom left corner of a post under the member information you'll see a set of scales. Clicking that icon will make a window appear. You can add a comment as to why you agree with the post or how much you like it, and then click OK. That increases that posters "rep power" so that when they rep someone they in turn get more rep from that poster. It is a way to give some quantification to the quality of a particular posters posts.

If you click the User CP link at the top left corner of the page you'll see a Reputation section which lists the various comments that people have given you and a link to the post that earned you that rep.

Note: You can only give "Rep" to the same individual once per 20 people. So if you rep someone you won't be able to do so again until you have repped 20 others. Also you can only give out rep 5 times per 24 hour period. Assuming the default settings are being used.

Thanks for clearing that up... I was wondering about that actually. i saw rep comments in my CP but wasn't sure how to rep another. Thanks fer the great post...

and... rep'd :D

Arcana, can you add the member's name to the Rep listing? It helps to know who the person is that makes the comment as well. Just in case the ask a question as part of the rep comment.

I don't think thats possible but I'll look...I think its designed to be anonymous. BUT...it may be a permissions thing that i can change.

Edit: Fixed I think..I have rep disabled for administrators (me) so I can't be certain, let me know if its working ok.

Yup. It is working. Thanks!

I run a vB board also and noted that the rep I'm getting here is all grey rep.

What are the rep rules for rep power?

ie: how much rep and / or how many posts do you need before your rep power is 1?

(When your rep power is 0, you can only give out "grey" rep, which in turn doesn't increase the person's rep, and thus doesn't give them the power to give out real rep either).

Also, how does rep power increase?

The defaults for vB are pretty steep, with rep power starting too slow and increasing too quickly, in my experience. On our forums we ended up going with a system where rep power is 0 until you have 10 posts AND 10 rep, and then becomes 1 - but never goes up again. Otherwise you end up with people who have 1000 rep handing out 10 rep at a time.

I believe rep is set to the default here as well. I notice that I can give out green rep, but I have over 600 posts and I've only received one green rep the other rep is all gray. Arcana would be the one to ask to find out for sure what the limits are set at.

I've modified the reputation settings AND added an FAQ entry about them. Check it out:
http://www.cartographersguild.com/fa...q#faq_rep_info

Excellent!

You might consider changing the following though:

Register Date Factor: for every 60 days, user gains one point of rep factor
Post Count Factor: for every 50 posts, user gains one point of rep factor
Rep Point Factor: for every 50 points of rep, user gains one point of rep factor

Change to 1 year. Anything shorter rep is going to be huge very quickly.
1000 posts. Makes things easier to calculate and keeps the rep a bit more under control especially considering those of us who post like crazy.
100 point of rep. Makes things easier to calculate and keeps the rep from exploding and not really being worth much.

This is based on the years of using rep at the Hero Games site.
Here are my rep stats for Hero Games:
129807 rep points
Rep power: 1305

That is actually about 3 years worth. When I rep someone I increase their rep power by 13 based on these numbers.

So how can you tell your rep points and power? Somewhere in the User CP?