Please let's not drag drama from elsewhere into any otherwise unrelated thread, thanks. I've cleaned up the offending posts.

I am, incidentally, curious as to why we currently display negative reputation?

In the old site, we capped it at zero (either as a display thing or physically). Is this just one of those "it's difficult to make the forum software do it" issues?

In some instances, it helps to see who is not acting within decent forum expectations. Granted, we start at 100, so you have 100 points to lose before you reach 0, but it is still possible to reach 0 while helping the community with appropriately voting down certain posts.

I don't think it's any more indicative to see somebody at -100 than 0. Rating is a generally crude metric anyway, and there are better ways to see how helpful (or not) a given user is. Visible negative ratings just seem to encourage public shaming and/or witch hunting more than anything else.

Anecdotally I have seen far more drama regarding very-negative-rated users recently (whose behavior in aggregate isn't even that bad compared to some users in the sites past), and I'm not sure I agree with a system that stimulates so much, well, negativity in our community.

I do agree there has been a fair amount of public shaming/witch hunting lately. Perhaps capping a negative to a smaller amount would suffice more? Easier to dig yourself out of a hole when you realize your negative actions?