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Why do I feel so much acomplishment at receiving "Blessings" and rep points?

Songsmith

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On this site there are both Blessings and rep points. I don't even know what how exactly they work, but I know that the more you get, the more people approve of what you've said. Now as I sit here and think I don't know that there is any forum-based site that doesn't have some form of reward for being clever or insightful or funny or whatever things people are responding to about your posts. Interesting.

There is no logical reason to get so excited to see those numbers climb, yet here I am feeling like I've accomplished something.
 

Oafman

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I never understood what these numbers mean. And Reps seems to have been hit by hyper-inflation, people literally have trillions. It's like money in the Weimar Republic. Perhaps it is time that the Central Reps Bank of CF took the decision to devalue the currency...
 
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Archaeopteryx

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When everyone has "a reputation beyond repute," it doesn't really mean much. There also appears to be no way to detract from that, which means that everyone gets an ever-overflowing pot of gold with no real currency to it. In principle, it could be a good system of social currency, rewarding those who make insightful comments or for engaging in discussion civilly. In practice, it enriches everyone and no one.
 
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Freodin

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The reputation system has been broken for years. Basically, you get more reputation when someone with a high reputation reps you. This spirals upwards and upwards and... reaches hights where no one cares anymore.

Reputation still has a meaning for the single posts: someone noticed your post, and felt strongly enough about it to notify you. I like to see feedback, comments, approval or disapproval for what I wrote... most people do.
 
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dms1972

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There is no logical reason for me either. From what I can figure out they seem not to represent anything, but are just fun ,and a rather daft idea. I think now they are therefore rather useless, and quite misleading psychologically. I pay little heed to them, but only to what I am reading in a thread. Basically the internet is anonymous and however honest many people are there are others who will be less so - additionally some people have become accustomed to playing second life type games, so I would not really rely on reputation for... what integrity, insightful comments, flaming, trolling - so reputation if that is what it is means nothing till you know what the reputation is for.

Its the content of a comment that matters.
 
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dms1972

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It's another internet illusion.

Heres what happened, The internet was talked about years ago - some people went - "oooh that could be abused, maybe we should be careful". Internet arrived, most people went "lets get on it and see what going on we can always delete our cookies" - Internet has been with us for a couple of decades, people starting to say "hang on - what is going on here"

Internet and world wide web.

Have we not warned about this?

"What profiteth a man if he gain the whole world but lose his own soul?" - Jesus of Nazareth
 
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GrowingSmaller

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We are social creatures , evolved in tribal settings, and therefore positive social feedback is preprogrammed to make us feel good.

Computer programmer Martin Nowak discussed reputation in his book Supercooperators...

In his own words:
 
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TillICollapse

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I've never paid them the least bit of mind in how I regard what someone says. Similarly, I don't care whether I'm a "Junior member" or newbie or whatever it says under my username.

If you'll notice, those blue cross bars that say how many years you've been a member are incorrect as well.
 
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PsychoSarah

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Yours isn't, unless you didn't join in December of 2013. That year was almost up, so 1 cross is right.

Mine isn't either.
 
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TillICollapse

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Yours isn't, unless you didn't join in December of 2013. That year was almost up, so 1 cross is right.

Mine isn't either.
I meant incorrect as in, inaccurate. I could be a member for 23 months, but it will show "one year" which is misleading if one were to focus on that alone.
 
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PsychoSarah

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I meant incorrect as in, inaccurate. I could be a member for 23 months, but it will show "one year" which is misleading if one were to focus on that alone.

I don't think anyone really bothers looking at those, I didn't even know what they represented until mine popped up.
 
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TillICollapse

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I don't think anyone really bothers looking at those, I didn't even know what they represented until mine popped up.
Which was somewhat my point lol ... they aren't really that relevant. And if someone were to look at them for relevance, they're misleading. Like the rep points, etc.
 
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Ada Lovelace

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Hopefully you'll smile when you get a notification about some blessings that were just sent your way.

The blessings and reps aren't necessarily an approval of your content or a reward for how valued you are as a participant. They can be sort of whimsically given. There are members here who write insightful, intelligent, and useful posts but have a relatively small number of blessings and reps, and ones who have billions of each but just lark about the site and don't really contribute much purposeful content to it. For me quality always trumps quantity.

It seems that a lot of it actually has to do with where you post rather than what you post. There are "repaholic" and "blessings exchange" sections here where people play various games and give one another reps and blessings just for participating. The more "power" a user has, the more reps you receive when you are given a rep by him or her, regardless of what you actually wrote. So if you're in an area where people enjoy collecting and giving reps and have billions to their account, just writing a good joke could net you far more reps than an area like this one where people aren't really into the game aspects of the site. There's also a thread where you report the number of reps you've given in the week and are "paid" four million blessings for each one. Two friends here have racked up hundreds of millions of blessings and reps from that thread. One friend said she often doesn't even read the content of posts, but will give blessings to people who have few just to brighten their day. So it's not about merit at all in some cases.

Anyhoo. I've never invested much time in any of the game areas or reported reps for blessings, but I think some of the people who have been so generous in the blessings they've given me did, so in a way I got that benefit. Obviously, you're not the only one who enjoys the reps and blessings since there are whole sections devoted to giving and receiving them. I think it's kind of like racking up points at an arcade and getting tickets that aren't really useful for true prizes but are fun to collect anyway.

I think that when you have gotten a meaningful rep comment or blessing, it can be sort of an accomplishment. There are actually some posts here that have been legitimately helpful to me. I had a science test on Monday and flashed back to a post someone had written here on the subject matter that truly helped me to understand it better. You might have helped someone here, too.
 
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Songsmith

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I did receive your point and I thank you from the bottom of my heart. Be cool and be blessed
 
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TillICollapse

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Bwahaha ... I just realized that I had a list of people who have repp'd me and even left comments I've never tried to give reps before, and I've never noticed my "list" before of people's personal comments either ... until just now. Thus, I didn't even know that was part of it or that I had ever received any comments in such a manner. I just took the time to read all of the ones I had gotten back to 2013 lol. A nice stroll to see comments from others I never knew existed On the off chance that anyone who ever rep'pd me sees this post right here ... thank you for your previous side comments in the reps, I appreciated them and appreciated reading them. A fun little surprise I didn't even know was there, collecting all this time. I appreciate it
 
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