I definitely agree. My guild (well, not mine, the one I'm in) is currently going through something similar. Someone got mad at the GL because he wouldn't just give them their way, left, and proceeded to bash the guild publicly in trade and still does every time we try a recruiting ad and he's on. Even people that we've known and played with for a while won't join because of the rumors he's spread.

The biggest problem with reputation, it seems, is not whether or not it's true. It doesn't matter really whether it's true or not, what matters is whether people believe it. And since they have no reason not to in most cases unless they already know better, they generally just believe it.

Reputations are a lot like trust. It's really easy to break someones trust, and it may never be possible to earn it back again. It really sucks that some people have to "break" others reputations just because they didn't get their way, or whatever the often unworthy reason is. All reporting does is (possibly) get rid of the ones doing the damage. It does nothing to fix the damage that was already done. There were some pretty good ideas on here so far about how to fix things though, so hopefully things work out for Stressed and anyone else having this problem.