That is definately not the purpose of the rating system, as I stated when I installed it and posted about it here:
http://www.swingersboard.com/forums/...reen-dots.html.
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This should be used to rate posts, if you see a post you think is a really great contribution to a thread, or a post that is exactly the opposite click the scale you see on the left side of the post under the posters username, from there you can give the post either a thumbsup or a thumbs down.
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The system should not be used to just say you don't agree with a particular post. We often don't agree and as you said it should be stated. The post rating system affects a users overall rating and the whole point is to help users identify who are quality posters and who are not. It does take a lot to really affect one person's rating. One negative or one positive is not going to be enough to really do much. But as I said in the beginning I do keep a pretty close eye on this system and I have deleted negative ratings in the past for this very reason and will delete this one as well.
The one downside of setting it up so that users are notified of new reputation (ratings) is that you see it immideately whereas before you may have never noticed something like this. I look at every negative rating and if I feel like a user has a valid reason for leaving a negative rating on a post, it stays. If it's something like this where they simply don't agree with what you said, it does not stay. That's why we require comments on negative ratings.