Demotion/demerit is a good way to encourage groupthink and punish dissenting opinions, so I don't like it. If you feel you read spam posts, hit the report button. No need to demote/demerit.
Plus, with so much drama on the reputation board, this feature most likely will be used for personal vendetta. It will also be more chaotic if the receiver can see who sent him the demote/demerit, and then expect retaliation. The current merit system is much better since it promotes positive attitudes, meanwhile, negative attitudes will be punished via report and moderation.
If the demotion button where to be approved I would do more chaos than good in the forum cause people would use It for more personal issues like retaliating for abuse or negative comments and it would really affect the balance of the forum and make it more like a mere social media or Reddit community.
The merit system is doing enough good now and I understand and know that at times getting merit can be quite an issue especially when there are so much active users on the forum posting everyday and with not enough merit sources to balance it out. I think the merit system as you said has done a good job promoting positive attitudes in the forum and has made many newbies step up there games and learn more since the merit now serves as ameans of recognition in the forum.
A ranking system should reflect competence, integrity and credibility of those it is bestowed upon. Unfortunately, the BTT system should be stremlined and made balanced through the implementation of necessary trade-offs. A system that promotes but never demotes never gets the best of its men. Let’s make this happen.
Oh, but it's much better than it used to be prior to the merit system, when members could create any number of accounts and rank them up simply by posting regularly for a long enough period of time. I've got a problem with giving demerit powers to any members here, no matter how trusted they seem or how long they've been here. The merit system isn't perfect, true, but I'd hate to see all of the potential abuse of demerits become real once one of those trusted members starts a feud with someone else....or just imagine whatever scenario you like. DT members have turned out to be scammers, liars, you name it. I'd rather have something closer to a democracy (or a
meritocracy) than what sounds like an oligarchy.
If a downvote or demerit system where to be introduced it would cause a lot of drama between users and simple arguments or negative comments could turn into a demerit fight and sure you would see that some users here have so many friends, the merit system might not be the best right now and not all users are benefiting from it, but it has done its job by making everyone more serious especially those that want to participate in signature campaign and earn money, they all have to step up their games on the forum.
People are obsessed with adding negativity to this site. The last thing the people who have destroyed the trust network’s legitimacy need is a new way to start harassing people on these forums. Take note of the folks that are for this idea and stay far away from them. That’s the best way to improve your forum experience.
The trust system has been abused so many times on this forum and I think that is enough, IMO I don't think there shoudl be any addition to the merit system right now cause its doing a perfect job getting everyone to make good post, and I think that was the reason for introducing it in the first place, not a way to show beef or have forum fight or make a user feel less of himself by actually demeriting his post and I think this would have a very negative side effect on the forum.
