It's like criticizing monarchy or dictatorship. THOSE ARE NOT BAD FORMS OF GOVERNMENT. Only when a godless man is at the helm. As a matter of fact, St. Thomas Aquinas thought that Monarchy was the best form of government, all things considered. Including the consideration that some monarchs are evil and some are good. Oh, and the Catholic Church is a monarchy with a hierarchy, not a democracy. So there's that.

Yes, that is the best form of government. I better understand why from this snip from Fr. Wathen.....

"...All legitimate rulers, we must understand, receive their power from God. All the kings of the middle ages, when they assumed power, acknowledged that they reign by the mercy of God. And the people recognized that for this reason they could not, either ignore their commands, nor could they overthrow them..." 

Don't we already have a sort of "blue checkmark" system with the member statuses such as Jr., Sr., Hero, etc.?

Thanks for the reports. I realized I was restricting upvotes, which I didn't mean to. I only want to stem the ability of "newbies" to attack long-standing members of CathInfo.

Let's put it this way: those who have stuck with CathInfo for years, made thousands of posts, should NOT be at a disadvantage compared to new users! But a month ago, if Joe Newbie signed up for a new account (and made the requisite # of posts to be able to start up/downvoting), Joe Newbie could become 13% of ANY user's downvotes -- including members with +4000 upvotes and -1000 downvotes. 13% of 1000 is 130! That's not fair to the long-standing member. So I had to do something about it.

NOW: instead of giving everyone a 13% cap on downvotes, it varies by person. Long-standing members will get the full 13% of a target's downvotes. But if your CURRENT UPVOTE COUNT is less than your victim's downvote count, you are limited to
13% of YOUR UPVOTE COUNT + (1/4 of the difference between your upvote count and his downvote count)

NOTE: It only goes one direction. If you have 6,000 upvotes, you don't get 13% of that figure. The system only checks to see if your Upvote count is LESS THAN your intended target's downvote count. If so, then it runs the calculation. You end up being able to give less downvotes, as you hit the 13% wall a bit sooner.

I might tweak that formula as time goes on. I might increase that 13% figure, now that it's not given out to anyone and everyone. Also, since people aren't very good about using the upvote/downvote feature (i.e., it doesn't have high participation UNFORTUNATELY), I might have to use POST COUNT instead of UPVOTE COUNT. Both would give me roughly what I'm looking for: an investment in the forum, something that says you deserve to vote that many times against an established member's reputation.

Is this the reason that no one is able to downvote certain posters?  e.g.:

Pretty much no one can downvote you anymore, Lad,

I'm not going solely by my own ability, but also by looking at reputation scores, as well as recent threads & their downvotes.  And comments such as the one above.  It seems some posters are no longer able to be downvoted at all. 

I seem to accuмulate about 50-100 downvotes per week, so I don't think it's really preventing too much.

With the old system, given that I have 5,000+ downvotes, an individual poster could have gone in and given me close to 1,000 just by himself.  There's a good chance that there are several individuals here who are responsible for 500 or more of the 5,000 that I accuмulated before.  Meanwhile, a poster with about 10 downvotes (because they only had a small number of posts), I couldn't give more than 2 to.  In other words, that person could hammer me with 1,000, while I could only give them 2.  So I agree that something didn't seem right.

I don't really care about the downvotes, personally.  I only even notice them when I get some for a completely innocuous post.

And, no, I'm not going to back down from a handful of posters here who continue to promote the Western / Jєωιѕн / Satanic propaganda against Russia and Putin, along with slanderous character assassination of any who feel that there's some (albeit limited) good in Putin ... such as +Vigano, +Williamson, myself, and quite a few others.

I've never said that Russia is beyond reproach or criticism, but the maniacal one-sided obsession with Putin, while ignoring the evils of the West, and practically serving as mouthpieces for Western propaganda ... that I have no patience for whatsoever.  That one poster who complained about being unable to downvote me posted a link implying that those who don't back the US in this entire thing are traitors and guilty of treason (and he'd likely have given me 1,000 downvotes by now if he could have).  I might take some of these guys seriously if they criticized both sides, but not when they might as well be CNN's, the UN's, Biden's, and Soros' representatives, propaganda mouthpieces, and paid agents on this forum.

I seem to accuмulate about 50-100 downvotes per week, so I don't think it's really preventing too much.

Then why has your "reputation" stayed at -5066 for the past 3 weeks?  Am I incorrect in understanding that to be a count of downvotes?   Whenever I down-vote anyone, that number changes.  

BTW, Lad, I just noticed additional text to your last post here, and I just want to say, my issue has nothing to do with the Putin topic or any other topic.  I am only commenting because I have noticed the inability to downvote certain posters, so when folks on other threads mentioned being unable to downvote you, I thought I'd point it out.  I just think there must still be a glitch in the system, because I find it hard to believe I'm an extreme down-voter for any member here.

p.s. The only reason I know your vote count is that I happened to screenshot some comments on a thread last month, and happened to trip across this screenshot.  The screenshot had nothing whatsoever to do with the vote count; I only saved it because there was some item of interest.  [I don't even recall at the moment what it was.  And it was nothing negative - i.e. I did not dislike what you posted in that thread!]  But when I saw that some posters are unable to be downvoted, and then I happened upon that screenshot I'd saved (totally unrelated), I was able to see that your vote count hadn't changed.  

PAT317 --
Your "denominator" for Ladislaus should be 1616. ((4415 - 683) / 4) + 683.

I ran a rectifying script that sets a user's "reputation" score to their ACTUAL, LATEST number of downvotes in the database. Each time someone is banned, their votes all get deleted. I don't have a script to automatically do this for each person -- but I can do it for select users. It just takes my time. Yes, I could write another script to go through and rectify each CathInfo user's votes. But I don't have the hours to write that script right now. (Maybe someone could motivate/bribe me to do so, with an Amazon gift. There is a place you can send a custom message on the gift receipt, just saying )

Anyhow, Lad has 4415 downvotes. You have 683 upvotes. You also "get" 1/4 of the difference between the two. That's a total of 1616.

So you should be able to downvote Lad a total of 210 times. You're not even 10% there yet.

What happens when you try to downvote Lad? You can try it JUST THIS ONCE for science. A) does the post show a downvote? If so, THE DOWNVOTE 100% EXISTS AND IS COUNTED. B) Does the Rep score update? The Rep score is a less reliable indicator; it's subject to being "updated" later with latest downvote totals. It's more of a best-guess or snapshot.

All that really matters is: did the vote get created or not. Rep scores could easily be "updated" by some script in the future. That's why I don't sweat it -- and why I simply delete the banned users VOTES on their way out. Because the votes' existence is the only issue. That's why, for example, the system looks at the TOTAL DOWNVOTES and not the REP SCORE when calculating the limits!

What happens when you try to downvote Lad? You can try it JUST THIS ONCE for science. A) does the post show a downvote? If so, THE DOWNVOTE 100% EXISTS AND IS COUNTED. The Rep score is a less reliable indicator; it's subject to being "updated" later with latest downvote totals. It's more of a best-guess or snapshot.

Thanks for the explanation. 

When I try to downvote (the several posters whom I am unable to downvote), I get a screen that says: 

This page isn't working.
www.cathinfo.com is unable to handle this request.

And the vote definitely doesn't register. 

Other posters said they get a blank page.  They might have meant that same screen. 

Has anyone noticed that downvotes for Lad lead to a blank page?