Trolling your reputation

Ectar:   This guy gets it.  It's one of my favourite bits of advice to give to anyone new to working in Community for any company or for anyone that posts on forums or websites in an official/senior capacity. It's not something everyone can do easily and takes a bit of trial and error sometimes to know your audience and know your style.   As I've said in the past the reputation system is quick method to judge the sentiment of a post, but we would never provide forum feedback on a high/low rep basis alone. We always read each and every reply, especially in the hot topics, to help gauge player opinions and feelings on certain topics. A news thread that has a high amount of downvotes on the initial article always means it's a hot topic which will have multiple replies and is likely something players don't like or something players expected to be different. It can also be a hot topic as players discuss amongst themselves the issue with various counter points.  A news thread that has a high amount of upvotes will have nowhere near the same amount of replies, and is likely something well received by the community. There will almost always be zero negativity in the thread as it gets shut down by the general consensus (and it's usually that 1 guy complaining just for the sake of complaining).   Reputation for individual players doesn't really make much difference to me as I know the regular trolls and players (or claimed "ex-players" ) who no matter the subject post negative comments every time. Those guys I have to admit now just get straight up ignored. The reason for this is because I know the only reason they're posting is to complain no matter the subject, and I know that no matter the reply from anyone, their view is never going to change and they just dismiss anything that anyone posts in reply to them (This only applies to about 2 or 3 specific players).    The trick with reputation is to not worry about it.  If you show people you're bothered about it, they'll downvote you out of spite knowing you'll likely post later to call them out and make a big deal about it. If you use the forums regularly, post content that is insightful, new, helpful, entertaining and useful, then reputation gains won't be an issue. If you're posting something you that is against the popular opinion or you know is going to cause aggro, don't be surprised if other players disagree with you.