The up/down buttons let you vote a post up or down by just one point without affecting the user's reputation.

If you leave reputation, the vote will automatically be increased or decreased by one, regardless of who you are or what forum you're in.

Oh, so its a kind of like a post review system?

Yes It's I guess kinda like a Digg-inspired thing only it integrates with our rep system.

That's really cool. Lots of great new features on the site! Great job!

Thanks!

So is there any way to tell (apart from actually checking the threads) if your posts are being up/down rated?

That's coming very shortly. Stay tuned.

Ooh exciting. I'm liking these site changes

Yeah i spoke to Dani about it on MSN she says that she is working on having the statistics on profiles

Hey Dani, not that I want to rain on anyone's parade. Ha ha.

...But those up/down arrows make the whole thing look cluttered.

I don't know about anyone else - but I just feel like clicking on them for no good reason. If it doesn't affect the rep then what's the point?

I think what would be more useful is the thing that was originally requested in this thread. The ability to allocate how much rep you wanna doll out to someone, or take away?

Isn't it like when we used to be able to rate the thread. Sure some people used to rate it but nobody paid any attention to it.