Not sure what it should be called. I’m sure this has been covered, but I’m wondering why SP has not implemented some sort of rep system, but went to the trouble of the mention and tag counts?
I personally feel that allowing any sort of “down voting” would be a bad idea, however allowing for up votes to be tallied and displayed, could be fun 
Something about gaming the forums as I remember …
FWIW I too, would like to see some sort of rep system. Maybe the ability to thank other users for their help and have the number of times one was thanked displayed somewhere?
Also, I never really figured out what “Mentioned” and “Tagged” actually mean and why they are good.
If anyone knows the answer, I would be grateful for a heads up.
Mentioned: Someone uses @James_Hibbard to say something directly to you in a post. I don’t even know how to use it though (you can see that your name didnt go swith to an url, which means it didnt work for me). I believe the tagged ability is pretty much teh same thing only with specific threads you created.
The rep system has been turned off, because it is too easily gamed. (There’s no guarantee that the votes represent true quality.) There’s nothing to stop you agreeing, or disagreeing, as part of the discussion—but it’s a better discussion if you say why. (If find that other forums, where posts move up and down according to how many votes they get, horribly confusing. You can’t follow the argument at all.)
The tagging and mentioning tools are handy for alerting other members about a discussion. For example, say you were discussing CSS and wanted our resident CSS guru, Paul O’B, to be aware of the conversation. If you give him a mention, he’ll be notified and come see what’s cooking. There are three ways to do a mention:
Completely agree. I was just wondering how a positive only system would work. Much like facebook, there is no dislike button. Only way is up
Yep, I see what you are saying. All the same, I’ve seen forums where likes get dished out for dubious reasons (people get silly about it) meaning that you tend to ignore all that stuff anyway. That’s why it’s much more interesting to me when people reply positively to another post and say why they approve. That way you get a much better idea of whether the like is useful or not, and you often learn more in the process.
[FONT=verdana]I’ve seen a few forums where you can “thank” or give “karma” to a post you like, but it’s invisible except to the two parties involved (the thanker and the thankee).
Some systems simply count the number of times you are thanked. In others, you receive a score based on the thanker’s own score (so a highly-regarded long-serving member will carry more weight than a newcomer).
Either way, the thankee’s total score is displayed in the little panel to the left of the post. Any forum member can see that, and can use it to judge the overall reputation of the person in question. But they don’t see which posts gave rise to the thanks, or who issued them.
Personally, I think this system works well. It’s certainly better than the system where the actual post moves up or down (I agree with Ralph that that’s confusing). Nor do I particular favour negative votes.
As far as tagging and mentioning are concerned, I wonder how many Sitepoint members are aware of this. I wasn’t until I had been a member for several months, and then I only found out about it because someone mentioned it in passing.
Mike
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Yes, it’s hard to get the message out, although there is a sticky about it. I guess as people frequent the forums they will see things like this and pick up on it in time. It hasn’t been a part of the forums for even a year yet, so we’ll see how it goes over time. Thread tagging hasn’t caught on at all so far.
How about thread tagging the sticky about it for us 
but only if he remembers to look under the Notifications dropdown at the top of the page, where a counter is incremented
otherwise, there is no actual “notification”
i don’t always remember to look, and sometimes only notice a notification days later
Yes, ideally there would be a more obvious indication that there’s been a mention.