"Rep" is the original vbulletin mechanism for peer recognition. You get rep automatically as your post counts increase, and you get rep when other users rep you. The more rep you have, the more rep you give when repping. Rep is intended to reflect a user's standing with the community. The only way to rep someone is by clicking the rep icon associated with a post. All users are limited in the amount of times they can rep in a day. Rep is private, in that only the recipient of rep sees individual reps and the comments. You can also give negative rep ("I disapprove").
"Likes" came with the vbSEO add-on. You can like as many posts as you want. Likes DO NOT contribute to a user's reputation, and all likes are equal (i.e. there is no difference between a like from a newb and a like from the board admin). The nice features of likes are the rollup at the top of the thread (you can see the total of the liked posts in a thread as well as what posts were liked how many times). You can also see everyone who has liked a post - so it is more "social". There is no connection with facebook Likes other than the label (which we could change). As it was added later, old posts will not have any likes. There have been requests of vbSEO to have likes linked with rep (i.e. x likes gives a rep point) but this has not been done.
The last thing is thread ratings. Threads can be rated as 1-5 compasses, and is intended to be a reflection of the quality of content of a thread (mainly used for tutorials and finished map posts). We use rating to determine what tutorials are deserving of an award.
SO they all overlap a bit, but have different functions.
In general:
- If you read a post and think "uh-huh, I agree" or "you said it, brother", a like is probably in order, rather than cluttering up the forum with a "hear, hear!" or a.
- If you read a post and think "That is great - this is high quality stuff and I want to acknowledge it as increasing the quality of the site" then give some rep (and post a response if you want to make it public recognition).
- If you read a thread and think "This is quality content" then rate the thread.
And nothing says you can't do more than one!
-Rob A>
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