Wouldn't it be nice to know the person who was nice, or was nasty towards you? So you can thank/confront that person? I was on another Vbullitin site, and they have the names of the user who gave the feedback.
in court matters, one has the right to confront one's accusers... here, it seems we don't... i agree we should!
As a point of etiquette, I always put my name on reputation I give. As for it being changed so that it's automatically on there, as I understand it the reputation feature is just something that's part of the vBulletin software, so it would probably be difficult for Daniel to alter it.
Most of the positive ones I've received have been signed by the giver. Giving out names for negative reps, on the rare occasion they are given would just start up rep wars as members retaliate against each other.
I think that the negative rep feature is a stupid inclusion, since I've never seen it cause anything but arguments.
We discourage the use of negative rep. I'm not sure if the vBulletin software makes it easy to disable the giving of negative rep without disabling rep completely. Maybe Daniel can look into it, although there are certainly higher priority things for him to work on in the time he as available. If you believe someone has given you negative rep out of spite, you can always ask a mod to look into it. We don't condone sneak attacks, and we have a reporting mechanism for people to use instead to object to inappropriate posts. Meanwhile, it IS considerate to identify yourself when handing out reputation. It isn't automatic, so please sign your comment.
it would be best to not have the negative one, if that can be arranged... and if it can't, then the whole system should be dumped... in fact, the whole thing should be done away with anyway, imo, as it's a hierarchical bit that does more harm, than good...
Most of the rep i've recieved has come been signed but sometimes it just comes and you have to guess who gave it to you. I've always found it to be a nice way to say thank you to someone for a suggestion or review.
The little green squares underneath people's avatars....I have two, in case some people didn't notice.