[lukevanoort]

Personally, I have never given out negative rep, but like some others I have come pretty close in a few circumstances. To me, it just doesn't seem like that useful of a tool; many of the posters on CD are intelligent people who will take constructive criticism if it is provided. It also seems to me that someone is more likely to take advice as constructive criticism and follow the advice if it is offered neutrally, instead of being accompanied by negative rep, which is part of the reason why I use neutral rep to convey a message that otherwise would have been accompanied by a red dot.

The other major reason why I don't give negative rep is a matter of scale. Many posts that are, in my opinion, candidates for negative rep come from newer users with smallish rep totals; my rep power is high enough that if I gave a newer user negative rep, it would represent a significant portion of their overall total. Wiping out 10% of someone's rep for a single mistake is not particularly high on my list of things to do, and is, in my opinion, disproportionate to what they actually did. Personally, I would like a feature that would let you choose to give someone just a single negative rep point instead of blasting someone's rep total, but I might be the only one.

On the other hand, I think the green dots are a very good feature to have. They give new members a positive incentive to make polite, helpful posts, which is always a good thing.