I like the idea, but I'm not sure that I'd like going beyond what we already have. I think the star system for threads is good, but I wouldn't want to extend it to individual users (past the "Post of the Month" thing they have, which I also like). I'm part of a forum that has a "reptuation" system, and it's pretty much broken. While people (especially in some parts of the forum) will indeed sometimes give you reps (a positive vote) for making good/insightful posts, and neg you (a negative vote) for making racist/misleading/etc. posts, the overwhelming majority of people there just vote based on 1) popularity (or whether they think there's a good chance that they will get a positive vote back at some point), and 2) posts that you happen to agree with, whether they were particularly good/insightful or not. I have gotten votes there based on such things as fairly dumb jokes I've made, my appearance (as with many people there, I have a
horror face shot as my avatar), because of the city I live in, because of my join date (I joined there in the summer of 2002, and am one of the few from those times still around), and so forth. They let you make a comment when adding/subtracting from the reputation, so you usually know why you got a vote. Once I got one positive and one negative vote on the same day, both for my beard
