This has been said many times before but I think it is relevant here as well - many people have mentioned how easy it is to gain ap's (as well as post count) but the ap system was introduced to reward those people who had contributed ell to the community - or had just been an ass to punish them.

But alot of aps are being given out in GCC, Tech humour etc
yes ok some of these posts may deserve it but 90% will not - i know i have gained alot from my posts in there as well - I dont think there are very many people who have not!

now we cannot remove the ap system from these forums for the simple reason that it would allow lamers to over-run those boards with no fear of getting neg'd - but what about a kind of middle ground? we have a report this thread button - why not a nominate this thread?

instead of being able to assign aps to a thread in one of the non computer related forums you could hit the nominate button and the request would go to a mod or something - they can view the thread and decide if
a) it does make a valuable contribution to the community
b) deserves negs

if they feel it does then a default amount can be given with some msg like "due to requests fro the community this post has been awarded pos/neg aps"

once a post has been found to meet the requirements to be given pos/neg then no-one else can request that it recive anymore - to stop the mod's inboxes beeing filled with requests

v_Ln