From what I understand, the whole purpose of shoving off the old Reputation system was so that there would no longer be a public count for the total amount of these available, so that no user could get influenced by users with particularly high values. Well, I've just realized this is still very possible to check out, and you can also see it with a quick glance at the user's individual page, although it isn't shoehorned into the sidebar of every post like before. Still, wasn't the whole idea to make this entirely per-post?
Something like that. I can probably null out that little segment with some template alterations, but it's honestly a pain in the ass to do. Still, I'm willing to do it if others want it gone. Also, maybe a couple of them have been intentionally sabotaged...
What use is removing the like counter if a user's actual reputation does the same thing, except newcomers won't be clued in? What's next, make everyone anonymous, so any form of reputation is impossible? It seems backwards to argue against a like counter while member labels are still a thing. Just because the people that decided a user was reputable were staff makes it okay, but when decided by regular users, it isn't? Since the ability to downvote doesn't exist now, the potential for trolling, as so much noise was made about before, is gone, so what's the problem?
You can't down vote anymore. You can only like. I don't see an issue with people's profiles showing how many likes they got. If you were to remove the number of likes each member has, then what's the point in the like system in the first place? May as well get rid of the whole like system. I think it's fine the way it is.
Speaking as an individual who had gained over 1200 reputation points/likes from the old forums, whilst everyone else had 300 or less. I can confirm that the points I had gained had little to do with the posts I made, and more to do with the fact that "Aww man, MarkeyJester! He's awesome! He makes brilliant hacks! I'm gonna upvote him!". And if you disagree, you only prove my point that the contents of my posts are generally not liable for a like, despite gaining it out of sheer popularity, and therefore, the likes system is useless. Check mate, sir. I am joking of course... On a side note though, and setting the joke bar down a meter. We only really received complaints for negative points, since that's impossible now that the points value is unsigned, the problem should be eliminated.
I'm not defending the like system in its entirety. My point is, removing the total like counter seems pointless when it's only part of a bigger problem, one that I don't think can be avoided, anyway. Likes have at least some use - a quick and easy way to give feedback - but, like rep, it can be abused. This just sounds like an attempt to cripple it further, to minimise its effects, making it more useless than ever. Might as well remove the entire thing, since per-post abuse will still be possible, even with the total counter gone, but then the bias will continue in posts, so then what?
Well, we don't know how points are stored in the database, they might still be signed, one of these days I'll try to give you 2³² likes to see what happens.
I know it's unsigned, because LazloPsylus told me through casual conversation. I wouldn't have claimed otherwise d=
To answer your question, they're stored as unsigned int(10) values. Plenty of fun can be had with DB access, or even just template access and some ingenuity. There's a few "edits" I've slipped in here and there, if you look hard enough...
