Hi Clicken :) long time no see!
I feel bad about how out of hand this reputation system has gone... At SES NY I talked to Rich and Mike about it... As it's used on most major forums.
Here's the idea - it's just small pips (little green .gif images) red if your naughty.
If Mike hadn't said anything... 70% of the board would have never known about it.
Here's some facts:
you can only vote a certain number of times per day
You can not vote for the same person twice (you have to vote for other people before you can vote for the same person again)
This is NOT a popularity contest! I can't stress that enough....
The simple fact of the matter is this - the only people this will have a negative effect on is the people that come to your home (WPW) and try to dirty it up with useless crap / spam. You can (as a regular member say I don't like that) and it gives the power to the posters!
This really is a GREAT thing... and it's a standard issue type of gizzy for ALL VBulletin systems.
for example if you were to go
here and take a look... you'd see all of our productive posters :)
In essence it's a great way to run self promotional spammers away :) When it comes out you'll all wonder why there was such a big deal made about it!
BTW you can only see the rep statements if you mouse over someone's pips otherwise it's hidden and as I said earlier... most people won't even know it's there!
.02