As Patience mentions on the front page, the LOTRO boards are getting an upgrade to include reputation for posters.  I’ve seen this in a bunch of other places so the concept certainly isn’t new, but I’m happy to see it coming to LOTRO.  Currently the only way to gauge a poster’s respectability is either their join date or post count.  However, as we all know there are some really spammy posters who don’t offer as much to the community as those with far less posts.  Overall, I think LOTRO already has a really good forums community but this will continue things in the right direction!  The info post is pretty straightforward, but I’ll summarize a bit here:

  • You can grant positive reputation points for posters
  • The amount you can give scales based on your time on the forums and how much reputation you have
    • so this rewards the older members and  fosters a more helpful community
    • but it doesn’t penalize the newer part of the community either
  • In order to give negative reputation you have to have 1500 positive reputation first
    • I really like this idea as it will prevent folks from just trashing people with newly created accounts
  • You will have the ability to show or hide your reputation level if you want
  • And if your reputation gets too low you will have your posts moderated and reviewed
    • Notice this isn’t an insta-ban as they want to review it to make sure it isn’t a case of someone “griefing” that player.