[Joshua May]

I'm not so sure on the idea of dividing rep by people's number of posts, because I think there is an inherint skew. Looking at the reputation charts, I see that many of those with high rep have made many posts (JVN, Baker, Brandon, DJ, etc), so perhaps they have posted good information alot of times. However, there are also members at the top of the list who have not made a miraculous number of posts (Karthik, Paul Copioli, Kris Fultz, Ken Patton), so perhaps these members have made very good, information posts not-so-many times. But by taking post number into consideration, people like JVN would have much higher reps than people like Paul, who is definitely just as contributive to the FIRST community.

Besides that, looking at all 66 of the people with 11 reputation bars, I'd say that I would go over 50 of them if I ever needed help with a robot question. And just about all the others are currently students on teams who have great potential to help FIRST even more if they start mentoring. And I would turn to an extremely vast majority of these people because of what they show outside of the technical aspects of FIRST, such as friendship, Gracious Professionalism, wit, courtesy, and all such things that make people great, and these are other things that they may bestow upon the FIRST as well.

So really, I think the reputation system is fine as it is, perhaps some changes and tinkering are needed here and there, but I don't see a single person who has high rep that doesn't deserve it in at least some form. And as far as rookies making their way to the top of the reputation ladder, I don't see much of a problem. It may be hard for them to make it to the #1 spot, but myself and a few others, namely Dori, Bharat, and Billfred (sorry to point you guys out) on these forums have only been around for about a year, and have already maxed out their rep bars, and I can already see the three of these (excluding myself) contributing to FIRST in their own ways that will better the community down on.