Xbox Live is famous.  It is known worldwide for a fantastic, easy to use service thats filled to the brink with complete jerk offs.  Its terrible how the average player cannot go into a game of Halo 3 or Call of Duty 4 without being pounded with racist, homophobic remarks.  To be totally fair, there is definitely a minority of these players but they totally ruin the experience for the majority.

To attempt to counter this Microsoft has implemented a number of systems, such as the ability to mute players, the reputation and the feedback systems.  The mute ability allows you to select a player from either the lobby or the recently played tab, select their gamertag and then mute them, it works, once a player is muted you can no longer hear them, which is the expected effect.  This is not a solution to the problem, this is akin to sweeping the dirt under the rug, the offenders are still swearing or being racist and they have no idea they've been muted, anybody else entering the lobby will have to mute this player.

The second ability is the reputation and feedback system.  If a player is behaving a certain way, for example, misusing their microphone, team killing or generally being a douche then you can report them through their gamertag.  This involves clicking the send feedback button, selecting negative feedback (I don't think anybody has ever sent positive feedback) and then selecting their offense from a list, game behavior, voice communication e.c.t.  Then in theory it should affect their reputation.  Now this is where the system becomes kinda weird.  Theres no way to know what happens when this feedback is sent, do they do anything with it?  Is it deleted or does it actually affect the guy?

I'm suggesting improvements to the feedback system for a few different reasons.  First and foremost I'm bored to tears. But mostly I really love Xbox LIVE, in my opinion its the best online system out there, only Steam competes in terms of features and integration of community, the system updates are great and add cool new features.  

So anyway, here are my suggestions:

The reputation system needs to be overhauled.  Right now there seems to be no consequence for wrong doers.  I suggest that instead the stars of the reputation represent lives.  Each gamertag gets 5 stars, for every breach of the terms of use or if enough people give them bad feedback they lose a star and get a strongly worded warning from Microsoft.  They lose all of their stars, instant ban.  That gamertag can never access the multiplayer components of LIVE again.  Their free to create another gamertag  and pay the fee but banned gamertags can never be reactivated.  Stars are given back to the gamertag 6 months after they are taken away.  This means that a spout of bad behavior isn't the end of a gamertag.

Feedback by players should be changed.  If 3 or more players submit the same type of feedback within 10 minutes against each other then a star is taken from the gamertag.  The players who submitted the feedback should get a message from Microsoft telling them that the gamertag they reported was punished.  This action would mean that players would get the sense that the system works and cause people to think twice before verbally attacking someone.

If a majority of players in the room mute somebody, lets say 75% of the people, that person loses 1 star from their rep, they receive a warning from Microsoft and they cannot use the mic to talk to anybody who is not on their friends list for a month.

So there are my suggestions.  I know their on the harsh side but I feel drastic measures need to be taken to reduce the frequency of bad behavior.   Sorry this post is kinda heavy handed, I'll try to make something a little more interesting and lighter next  ;)