META: What is the point?

Well, I don't think the point is to make your posts in outline form either.  

Did you post this just for the point?

That was rather poetic

See what I did there?

I always saw MGoPoints as being fun and kind of a rough measuring stick for the quality of content a person provides.  If someone makes a good point or a good joke, +1.  -1 to the jerks.  Since MGoPoints were basically free though you were always free to vote based on your feelings.  Once you got over 300 MGoPoints it didn't matter, because you could still post when Henri showed up.   

The deal is I feel like the new voting system has created economic rules that are rough on posters will smaller points totals.  I'm closing on 5k MGoPoints.  If say I have a net change of -20 MGoPoints in a day because I get myself negged or spend them on a troll, big freaking deal.   However for a poster sitting on 200 MGoPoints, that -20 is a much larger dong punch.  So for a guy with say 200 points, there is an incentive not to vote at all and simply hope for +1s.  Basically it creates a system where it is in the best interest of a lot of people not to vote if their goal to get a decent points total.  They also now have the extra cognitive load of having to worry if they really want to spend on a point on something or not.  

So I dislike this system because I remember last year when Henri first showed up and I was at ~70 MGoPoints.  Suddenly I couldn't post for periods and that really stunk.  I had to up my activity and scrounge around for quality posts until I got a decent ways over 300 and was immune to Henri.  I hope Henri doesn't pop us this year, because I'll bad for the newer members who are fighting to get their points totals up, as these rules will only make it harder.   

I just want to know how much time someone has to spend on MGoBlog to earn 10 or 20 THOUSAND points?  Holy Crap! 

the "Donate Points" button?

I think this will keep the overactive negbangers, like the person who seemed to go through negbanging every post on many threads a couple of weeks ago, from thoughtlessly using the neg button.  It will also have a negative effect on posbanging, but it is probably worth the trade-off. 

I think the changes will produce a lot less movement in points totals, and make it harder for trolls to "gain traction."  The "ten-day" rule will keep those with waaay too much time on their hands and enough points to lose from going back and negging every post a person has made for the last year, too. 

Whatever one's opinion on the changes, I think it is safe to say that Brian put a lot of thought into them, and that they will help further his vision of what mgoblog should be.  In other words, I'm "all in."

The decision to charge points when negging was brilliant, since I've thought for months that it was out of control at various times. When the most innocuous, noncontroversial, common-sense comments get negged constantly, something has to be done, and Brian & Co did it in a way that doesn't require a heavy-handed police state to enforce it.

I feel very different about imposing a cost to upvote. I agree with the OP's point—this is a community, not an economy, and the notion of charging for registering your approval—even if it involves a purely fictional medium of exchange—seems frankly a bit bizarre in principle. It's not going to affect the time I spend here, and since I don't care about accumulating points it doesn't truly matter in practical terms, but I don't understand the necessity of doing it. Why exact a cost for saying "I agree" or "you're freaking hilarious?"

I honestly think this is going to dillute the quality of the board.  

Here's why.

Originally when the MGoPoint system was initiated, Brian stated something to the effect that he instituted the system so the board could sort of self-moderate.  It's a way of encouraging quality posts and a deterrent to shitty posting.  

For the most part, it's worked well.

Now, however, it costs users points to in order to participate in the system and thus accomplish the goal the system was created for.  It penalizes users for doing the very thing we're supposed to do (self-moderating by making use of the points) which renders the whole thing incoherent.  

Now that it costs points to up or down vote, over time less people will do it.  With less consequences for mediocre or bad posting, it will start to happen more and more, just watch.  It won't happen overnight, but over time it will.  

Plus, in all honesty, sometimes I would just upvote a post that I agreed with as a way of saying "I agree", without making a post that says "I agree", which is useless and just clutters up the board....  But now it's going to cost me a point to do that?  WTF?  Upvotes, in this way, functioned not only as a means of self-moderating, but a way of participating in the discussion when I didn't have something substantial of my own to add to it but wanted to say "amen" to whatever someone else said....  So, now it costs all of us if we want to participate in a conversation in that way.  Don't like it at all.  

Anyhow, I'm not a fan of the change.  Please give me my old MGoBoard back.