Public appeal for Rep removal

[Coltona]

Reputation system is destroying these forums.

At the beginning I thought it was a fun system: I was able to express if I liked someone's post. We all were all excited about it in the beginning. But to what direction it has been steering these forums nowadays...

Rep seems to be all that matters nowadays. For some it means thing to be pursued for. And some hunt down the ones to whom the rep matters while do-gooders (not trying to offend) come and defend the thread maker hoping for improvement and encouraging the maker most commonly without any hope. By this I mean this:

Guy X makes a ridiculous guide/list clearly just to earn himself some spare thanks. Guy Z comes in and states the real purpose of the "guide" and after that Guy C comes and defends Guy X. Then comes the flame war...

Besides this fact reputation system makes newcomers harder to be accustomed with others and to be heared. Rep system favors those with more thanks and those without any of them remain often unnoticed and unheared. Like if I say some idea in a thread and just after me a newcomer says even better idea, it's most likely my thread would get more views and overall attention than some new one's better thread about the same excact thing. Not the best example but I am sure u get the point.

But the biggest problem is the pursue of reputation and thanks by some. When I daily scroll down the General Discussion section there must be at least 2 guides which are usually not that much of a use. This is done most likely to pursue GoA or AoA as an example but some see the rep system as a bypass to fame. Take a look of DL forums: On the very first day of DL release we had full page of diffirent guides and item lists on general discussion. On the very first day! It took months for PL forums to develop that many guides/lists.

There'll be more...

States the guy with 4 rep tiles (little green bars). Here's an idea:

Let's encourage people to make guides for the right reason, and make it to where guides can't be thanked unless stickied or moved to the guide section. This would cut down on pointless guides, but most likely people will still be making seemingly useless guides, and for good reason. It gives you a feeling of accomplishment to know you made something worth sharing that others can benefit from. If it is stickied or made a true guide, it becomes something you can always be proud of that thousands will see and read. And FYI guides aren't for veterans, they're for new players who are just starting the game that might need some help with the simplest of tasks.

I think you can tell when a guide is real or not.
Real:
Went into good detail, added pictures to show their meaning, added facts about the game that need to be mentioned, and didn't leave a sentence at the bottom say "If this helped you, like it."

Rep-trolls:
Quick crappy guide sloppily put together, no updates to improve it, very minute detail, no real meaning to the guide (like a guide on how to auto attack in pl) and at the end asked for thanks if it helped you.

So I say don't get rid of rep, it drives people to make helpful posts, encourage others, and stop flame wars with reason instead of trolling, which makes the forums an all-around better place to any player new or veteran. Instead if a guide is pointless don't like it, but don't flame it either, if a dev locks it that's the end of it, if not click that red triangle no one ever mentions to report the post as useless, or trollish for rep.