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[PeteM]

Originally Posted by Ron MacRae

While trawling through the list trying to work out how people managed to get negative reputations I was tempted to reply to some of the very old threads I disagreed with but I managed to resist as it seems to upset a few people, not sure why. Perhaps it's some sort of forum rule?

Ever had or seen one of those arguments that keep getting resurrected, you know the type of thing, a couple have not discussed something for weeks then it is brought up and it is straight into full blown shouting in seconds. Resurrecting an old thread is similar.

There is also the problem that anything said two years ago needs to be read in the context of two years ago which does not always happen. If you want to discuss something that was discussed a while ago just start a new thread and reference the original discussion.

Originally Posted by Ron MacRae

I still think it's odd that my votes don't count as I havn't made 50 posts yet. Although with all this snow I've ended up doubling my posts this week and might even reach 50 before the end of the year.

It is part of mechanism to stop manipulation. If you can vote after only a few posts you can create a dummy account (known as a sock puppet) post a few trivial items then add or remove reputation, then do the same again repeatedly. If you vote for your own sock puppets you can increase their reputation and thereby increase the worth of their votes.

Setting a minimum number of posts before votes count means that this is harder and therefore less likely to be done and more likely to get spotted by the long suffering moderation team.