elatio

I'll address a small part of this rant. The modding community exists almost solely to serve itself. If someone mods something into a game it's usually (and in fact almost exclusively) a thing that author wanted in their own game first and foremost. Sites like this one are made so that people can share these mods, but in the end a mod is usually created because the author wanted it for themselves. Bearing that in mind, they are under no obligation to ensure that their work conforms with anyone elses personal ethics or opinions. Barring obvious and inexcusable hate mongering (which is bannable) whatever a person decides to put in a mod they make is up to them, and them alone. The Nexus staff (in spite of the other things they're not so good at) protect this freedom of expression quite adamantly. Something might offend you, but that doesn't mean it has no right to exist, or that nobody else can appreciate it. It doesn't matter whether it's a completely unrealistic representation of beauty or a peculiarly well sculpted 3d model of a horses anus. If you want diversity and tolerance you'd better practice what you preach.

This is also true, when shifting power from user concensus to the author's own judgement, the potential for abuse is arguably greater.

I think the reasoning is you got the numbers flipped. It wasn't 1:10 but rather 10:1 last time I checked, and cost quite a number of authors during the process already.Maybe on a few mods that have been made the target of abuse, but I'm sure the numbers on the site as a whole reflect the opposite. Bad apples spoiling the bunch and all that.

Isn't that one joke/troll post an author's expense worth the other ten that would actually help people? If removing rep because of that one post buries the other ones that are worth reading, hasn't that effectively harmed the site more? I don't mean to publicly undermine or challenge, I just don't understand the reasoning.

This. Posts that were repped positively were usually helpful suggestions or a problem with a mod a majority of the users have had/having. I'm in agreement with this too. Positively repped posts are more often than not helpful for many people and more than worth the risk of a few bruised feelings.

The ability to quickly and easily identify helpful posts or fixes to rare problems not addressed on the mod page itself was invaluable to me, as was hiding obvious crap posts and backing user suggestions that you'd like the author to see. Personally I'd rather people continue to use the report function and just grow thicker skin, take the good with the bad. When something like this happens we're all damaged.