As I was browsing around today I found a lot of positive posts in about 3/4 topics which I upvoted as they were helpful and contributed to the topic. However as I continued browsing I found some more positive/helpful comments which I wished to upvote as again they contributed to the discussion, only I was met with a "you are out of positive up votes".

I guess the limit is there to stop abuse of the rep system (where by when you upvote someone you get +1 rep) but I was thinking could there maybe be 2 limits put in. The first one as is now at say 10 up votes where you get the +1 rep but then an upper limit of say 50 with the extra 40 you don't get the rep yourself.

I'm happy to hear any criticisms of the idea and try and discuss ways that this could be made to work.

It may also be to prevent some people from having a larger effect than others by just voting a lot, and to prevent abuse from users using alternate accounts to upvote all of their own posts.

Having upvoting give reputation is a problem in itself, because it makes upvotes less meaningful, since a significant number of people just tend to go on daily upvote sprees without even paying attention to what posts they're upvoting.

I would suggest making upvotes give reputation to neither the giver NOR the receiver, UNTIL the post receives a certain number of upvotes (a concordance of opinion in the community), in which case it pays out reputation to all.

In order to allow people to give unlimited upvotes, you'd also have to weight the upvotes (and the payout in reputation) based on the number of upvotes that person gave that day (so, more upvotes means each one means less, and pays out less reputation back when they upvote something useful).

That would prevent the random upvoting, and reduce abuse potential substantially. Of course, you'd also have to hide what posts were upvoted to keep users from just parroting other's responses.

I forgot this was one of those rare forum communities that have adults and sensible replies as I was expecting "Nope" and "not gonna happen" type responses.

Back on topic:
When I'm looking for a solution to a problem I tend to quickly scan for high up-votes as I generally look at those first as to me they are "community moderated/reviewed" (sort of like Stack Overflow).

I agree Ashaman I tend to up-vote posts that are helpful and contributing to the topic as I'm sure I'm not the only one who scans for positive up-votes when looking for a solution or some advice.
I like the idea behind StarMires no rep either way until a minimum number of votes have been cast but as Ashaman pointed out this would result in the smaller topics being neglected. The problem of weighting is that if I cast 20 votes now and then another 20 later (same day) then each vote is worth 1/40th of the payout BUT at the first 20 each vote is worth 1/20th. The only way would be to have the rep from each days voting done at the end of the day otherwise you end up with bouncing rep.

I think the biggest hurdle is always going to be the abuse potential, maybe if we found a solution to that first then this would be a much more feasible and do able idea but then again they will almost go hand in hand as the restrictions are there to prevent/minimise the abuse.

I like the idea behind StarMires no rep either way until a minimum number of votes have been cast but as Ashaman pointed out this would result in the smaller topics being neglected.

Easy fix; have a certain amount of available rep per topic (which increases only slightly as the topic grows, as some kind of log of reply length, so there are diminishing returns). This way, posting something useful in smaller less discussed topics is more useful to reputation than participating in some massively popular thread, where most of the available rep has already been gobbled up.

Rep calculated based on concordance of users wouldn't be done right away anyway, but would be weighted and calculated at the end of the day or week or something when enough votes are in, or enough opportunity to get those votes (at which point, the reputation could become visible and the voting period could be ended, thus preventing abuse from users trying to parrot others for rep without reading).

I think the biggest hurdle is always going to be the abuse potential, maybe if we found a solution to that first then this would be a much more feasible and do able idea but then again they will almost go hand in hand as the restrictions are there to prevent/minimise the abuse.

That's a good way to think about it. I kind of do incremental revisions. Come up with an idea, think about abuse, and revise the idea. But starting with ways to prevent abuse and then molding that into a workable system could be useful.

- We don't want people upvoting themselves (this is tricky through alt accounts, and I think just requires some specific abuse controls to watch accounts and what they're upvoting. We could also not allow new users, or users under a certain rep, to vote.)

- We want to make people read the posts, and be sure a post is helpful before upvoting, and we need to be able to confirm it's helpful somehow (thus my concordance suggestion, but there may be other ways too)

- We want unlimited voting, but smart voting so people don't just spam, so there needs to be both a cost and a benefit to voting which have to be balanced.

- We don't want people upvoting themselves (this is tricky through alt accounts, and I think just requires some specific abuse controls to watch accounts and what they're upvoting. We could also not allow new users, or users under a certain rep, to vote.)

- We want to make people read the posts, and be sure a post is helpful before upvoting, and we need to be able to confirm it's helpful somehow (thus my concordance suggestion, but there may be other ways too)

- We want unlimited voting, but smart voting so people don't just spam, so there needs to be both a cost and a benefit to voting which have to be balanced.

350 rep && 6 weeks on site = 15 (values are for illustration only)

This way people who create alt accounts to upvote themselves aren't going to benefit until their "main" account has been registered for at least the minimum amount of time AND achieved the minimum rep as well. Possibly even have it that before they can vote at all they need to have been registered for at least X period of time thus decreasing the usefulness of creating alt accounts for the purpose of trying to boost themselves.

What happens to posts that are deleted with up votes? Is the rep removed from everyone or what happens? That could be another way of dealing with smart voting. If a post is reported as being off topic/spam/etc and is deleted by the moderation team then remove the rep from those that voted on it and the poster. You could also expand on this by adding a strike counter, if people accrue so many strikes then they get suspended from voting for a period of time but again this could be open to abuse although the below may help prevent that as well.

Also hiding the actual +/- counter and just having the [+]/[-] buttons would help prevent the parrot voting that you mention thus increasing the chance that votes are being done in a smarter manner.

The original reason for giving rep to upvotes was because there was a time where nothing really got upvoted. Granted, the mechanism for voting wasn't as prominent as it is now but we wanted to encourage upvoting as a positive way to recognize others. I think there is always going to be the potential for abuse no matter what the system happens to be. The biggest concern would be if a large percentage of people are upvoting with no rationale whatsoever just for imaginary internet points, which I'm not really seeing on this end.

The community seems to regulate itself pretty well when it comes to moderating individual replies / posts.