[Leshy]

Originally Posted by horn

yeah i'm saying this is complete crap. unless by "valid", you literally mean "they repped you". which seems pretty worthless.

The fact that someone reps you either positively or negatively already implies that that person has taken notice of you in either a favourable or disfavourable manner. As such, the rep that they give merely reflects the change to your overall reputation within the community as a result of them taking notice of you.

And that holds true regardless of whether they even give a reason for repping you.

ok, now what about the 95% of neg rep that offers either no reason at all for the rep or a pretty baseless "lol u suck". also, even if you got a short essay in the rep, it still doesn't mean you have the full reason for the rep. i'm fairly certain i could give "good" reasons to neg rep people despite the real reason for me doing so being that i just don't like them.

I fail to see how any of this is relevant to whether or not names are shown alongside the reputation, since giving no reason, or giving a false reason are seperate things from the issue at hand.

are you seriously suggesting that because you have received neg and pos rep from the same user in the past that it shows anonymous neg reps aren't given out in spite?

Again, this is not at all what I'm saying - maybe I should spell things out for you.

You claimed that knowing who gave you reputation helps in determining whether it was valid. The only scenario in which this realistically can be true, is if you assume that someone else is giving you negative reputation because they dislike you, rather than the reason that they stated.
To that effect, I made the above reply; reputation can easily come either way from people that like you, as well as from people that dislike you. Whether or not their names are present on that reputation doesn't necessarily affect the veracity of their reasons for repping you.

what do you mean it doesn't happen? was there some kind of a beta test i missed?

I dare to say with great confidence that the amount of people that actually sit there clicking each post's reputation button to see what other people said about that post is not particularly large, and that nearly all reputation given is only ever read by the recipient.

I'm willing to concede that I could be totally wrong on this, but it would very much surprise me.

no, my argument(s) consist of deconstructing the supposed merits of having anoymous neg rep in the first place, then showing how unconcealed rep would be of bennefit to the community.

I have yet to see one solid argument from you in favour of signed reputation, whereas ironically, you keep throwing up arguments against it:

• "If you can see the name of someone who repped you, you can decide whether they are lying or not."
  Of course, if names are revealed on reputation, you actually increase the chances that people will lie to you, rather than give you the truth anonymously.
• "If you can see the names of people repping, people are less likely to give negative reputation without a good reason."
  Of course, there is little to no reason to assume that revealing names on reputation will actually change the amount of comment-less reputation. On the other hand it increases the chances that people will lie about their reasons for negatively repping you more, and it is very much probable that the amount of "revenge rep" will in fact increase, abusing the system even more. Additionally, it may put people off giving justified negative reputation out of fear for being neg repped in return.