[Answered] Should certain threads be exempt from earning rep?

When we recently had the bout of spammers targetting the site, it made me aware of certain factors that affect the site. This site is one of those that has a system that I guess is there to reflect a person's contribution and helpfulness, to let others know who you might be able to guarantee a helpful answer from... the Reputation system.

But there are places, threads on the site, that allow for that to be prematurely boosted, simply as a result of post-frequency. So my question is, should threads that encourage frequent and non-constructive contributions, be marked as rep-exempt? Should those threads simply have their votes counted as a "Hey we like your post.", rather than a "Hey, that's really useful, thank you for taking the time to help me with my problem." type of vote that they are being counted as?

You know, a bit like the difference between the "Like" button on Facebook, and the "Upvote" button on StackOverflow. Or am I over-thinking the significance of the reputation system on the site?

V4D3R

Well said.

rappo

You're over-thinking the significance in my opinion, and I can't even control the reputation settings on that level. It's either enabled or disabled. This would be a feature request for NodeBB.

@rappo Then I suppose that would beg the question, if it has no real significance, why have it? If reputation can be gained faster through a spam thread than it can through normal/helpful interaction, what is reputation actually for?

To me that just says "Spam lots, get upvotes, build rep"... it makes the reward for actually taking the time to help, feel a bit of an empty glass. I can either spend 30 minutes to an hour writing a small mod that helps someone and get an upvote for that (although not guaranteed) or I can bash the spam threads and get several.

Anyway, I just thought I would ask... it only came about from me seeing the users page more often recently. I'm also not used to being able to contribute to the extent I can here, so maybe LOLCatz >= real help just irks me a bit. (I know we don't get lolcatz... yet ... it was the first spam thing that popped into my head )

I'll mark this as solved and close the thread unless someone else has anything to say...