Not too long ago I was able to reach the trusted position and gained a lot of privileges. However, since reaching that position I lost two full points. Now, being a staff does keep me (to some extent) from getting back to newbie with all the limitations it implies.

But I want to know: what have I done? Are my opinion THAT controversial?

janus : No not really but unexpected things happen when you least expect it. People lose their trust points even me. You just got to work harder to obtain it. Also another thing you can lose trust points from the person who you gave some too. I can't remember the other reasons but that is the most known on. So don't get upset about it ok?

I have no idea why you lost your trust points but I know that this sort of thread rarely does any good for getting trust points back or finding out the reasons why.

And since I'm not allowed to give out information on who gives or takes trust points I can't even direct you to the people or them to you regarding this issue.

I can close this if you want but you are free to have it open if you want to hear opinions from people.

My goal wasn't to get those points back. I wanted to know whether I needed to change something major. You can close it tomorrow if you want.

The real question shouldn't be "am I that controversial?"

The real question to ask yourself is, "Why do I place so much value in Trust Points?"

If you answer and converse well, you have a high opinion of yourself and you're confident you're trying to help others, you're all set.  If you wander around, worrying about upsetting someone else and afraid they'll take away their score for you, you're going to lose.  You won't be effective.

Imagine if everyone tried really hard to never offend anyone else.  Where would we be?  Religion wouldn't exist, that's for sure.  All these important things that need to happen wouldn't happen.  And just because someone else likes you doesn't mean you're helping them.

I have (had) a friend that had problems with her boyfriend.  She didn't want to hear a bunch of stuff but a few friends and I teamed up and told her how things were.

She hated us for it but she dumped the guy and you could see the happiness and the change in her life a year later.  I haven't talked to her in years but I know she made a good decision.  We didn't tell her what she wanted to hear.

Tell the truth.  The rest will fall into place.

Janus,you cannot please everyone. You say what you think is right and your version of right may be different from others. Like they say in Metal Gear Solid 3,today's good can be tomorrow's evil. I know what it is like to have people hate my opinions. For example,I am pro-gun and every anti gun person wants a piece of me with their usual line of BS. "Guns are evil! We would be better off without guns! Only the police and military should have guns!"

I would not worry about trust points,most of us on here just try to play nice and enjoy a wonderful site for playing games and we do not have to seek out ROMs and worry if they will harm our computers.

As some have said before, it probably is because someone you rated got downrated, but two full points being deducted from that seems a ton in this little time.

You shouldn't care about TP, they fluctuate the least you expect it. The people that trusts you doesn't always give you TP, and it's not like you lose reputation or many privileges for being a normal member after all, despite what you might say. I've never been a Trusted member (ascended directly to staff), but for what I can see those lots of privileges you speak off aren't that much of an issue.

Some people abuses the TP system so badly. Disagreeing with someone's opinion doesn't justify a downrate. The important thing is that you're staff now, and as long as you carry on your responsibilities you have nothing to blame yourself for. Besides, you've spent enough time as staff to earn the Elite position if you step down, so no reason for you to care about TP.

janus :

the tp system isn't exactly a proper measurement of what a good quality member is.

I have seen people quit just because of the way their Not trusted, and I find it garbage and uncool that people just take one rank so seriously,

I've lost tp before, I even lost the rank, I regained it though, do I care?

Not really, after all it's just a few extra places to post, and a layout maker that is not really useful unless you know coding.


Just keep being yourself and obey the rules like normal, Don't let the whole TP abuse or trust point system get to your head.

And you only get newbie rank if you're at negative 5 tp, so unless you've been acting mean or disobeying rules or something along the lines of that, then you should be fine.

Hey, it happens to people all the time. I wouldn't look into it too much. Trust points don't really mean much more than a popularity contest.

People tend to react poorly if someone has a very strong opinion that differs theirs. Especially if that person is really strict/abrasive with that opinion.

A better gauge to see how you support the site is the CP, not the trust points. I would focus on the CP more since that's actually a gauge of how much you have contributed to the site.

Thank you all for your words. I wasn't *really* worried about the trust points, really. I just wanted to see whether I had done such terrible things that people would simply stop "trusting" me and I would eventually fall back to a newbie status.

as long as you are a staff member the trust points won't do anything to you. It's only while you are a trusted member that you would be affected. Even when you are done being staff you'll likely end up being Vizzed Elite which also isn't affected by trust points.

I'm inclined to somewhat agree with Jordanv78 here about TP. It really is more of a symbol of how popular you are on the site and not neccessairly how good you are as a member and like he said people with strong opinions that are often outspoken about them (which you seem to be) may have TPs taken away from them simply because of that. For you specifically I'd guess it might have something to do with previous TdVs, and the whole discussion about your review replies, not saying I didn't think you were following rules but it was something that seemed to cause a lot of commotion. So yeah you shouldn't let it get to you.

I really think it's a shame though, I get each person has different opinions on what they consider grounds for taking and giving TP but it still somewhat feels to me at least that the whole being able to take TP from members ability given to staff members is being abused by some.

Jordanv78 : I don't really think CP is a good measurement either, while of course someone with 50000 cp has usually contributed to the site much more than someone with 5000, some actions earn you much more CP in a shorter time than others will often because it's somewhat hard to gauge and there are of course some things that isn't covered by it. I really think the CP and Viz gain for a lot of actions need to be better balanced, it's really a discussion for another thread I suppose but I just wanted to address that.

Zlinqx : Oh I would agree, that there are a lot of functions on the site that do not award CP and that the system is in no way perfect, but what I was saying is that CP specifically is a way better gaugue on what a user has actually done to help the site out. Way more so than Trust points, anyways.

But as you said, it's probably a better discussion for a different thread.

Jordanv78 :


If you ask me the  trust point system should scale with how many likes you get.

The Liking system was one of the best things to happen to this site, and if you ask me it should play a bigger role.

I remember being on one site, and like every member rank on there was"New member, active member, well known member"

And each of those were determined by how many post you've made, and also how many likes you've gotten.
If vizzed had a similar system, I'd think TP loss wouldn't be much of an issue in that regard.





The CP system should scale towards something like a staff postion, but that's just my take on it.



If a discussion of sorts happens in a different thread, I can gladly take my input on it if needed.

janus : Don't beat yourself over the issues you suffered. We all have bad times on Vizzed, everyone of us (take me for instance, I retired from Local due to issues that started outside of Vizzed). Heck, even David had a few bad days on here the 11 years Vizzed has been around. Don't take those bad days into heart. Just learn from your mistakes and move on to the future.

Tell you the truth, you are an amazing staff member who does a whole lot, in fact, more than some of the other staff members (won't say who to avoid problems). So, just be proud on what you're doing for the site, don't let an issue affect on who you are.

SuperCrash64 : I actually think that having likes scale to TP isn't that great of an idea...

If the like/dislike system was used how it was meant to (basically likes for quality posts and dislikes for bad quality posts), then I could see it working, but that's not the case currently :s.

Some people dislike posts just because they disagreed with it, instead of whether the post was of poor quality and/or whether it was breaking rules. And from what I've seen, likes are most commonly gained by posting a funny post, making a milestone thread, or making a review/guide. Which doesn't reflect the quality of the post (with exception to the last cause I listed). Regardless, having a high post rating does reflect the user's post quality to an extent, but shouldn't play a bigger role than it does now.

I honestly think it should stay the way it is. And I'm not going to discus more in this thread because then we'd be going too off-topic.

As for the actual thread topic...

janus : I agree with Jordanv78 here. It's pretty much a popularity contest, and isn't that accurate when showing a user's worth on Vizzed. Besides, when some Staff+ abuse the TP system by taking away TP from a user just because they don't like said user, TP means even less (not going to point fingers here, partly because I don't know who have abused the TP system or if anyone has abused it at all :p).

On a little side note, even though I may not know you personally, I think you're a good Staff member .

Nah, TP is in no way a reflection of how good or bad you are. If I may be too honest here, I've seen complete jerks with 20 or more TP (not the actual number, I just remember it was really high) and some of the nicest people I've ever seen on this site have walked around under trysted status and never reached it.

Basically what usually happens is you say stuff that people find too offensive or you're taken as judging someone or whatever. Unfortunately there's a fine line between standing up firmly for what you believe and being a jerk, or at least in the perception of those two things. And if I may be so bold, the debate forum is a good place to lose TP because people are extremely defensive of what they believe, and speaking against that will be taken as an attack against them personally. I've seen really good people lose TP for this very reason, and they weren't being mean or anything either. So that's a definite possibility if you frequent said forum. Not to discourage you from posting there though. And sometimes people just abuse the system and decide they don't like you for whatever random reason and rate you down. So like everyone here has said, it may mean nothing at all. I'd say just look into what you were saying or how you were acting when it happened and see if you can find a link. If so, think about changing that. If not, don't worry about it.

If you care about trust points, you have a lot to learn. They mean next to nothing. Maybe a staff member disagreed with your opinion on something, which just means you're different people, but decided to be salty and downrate you. 

All right guys, tahnk you very much for your comments. I am now completely reassured.

Local Mods : you can close this thread now