Reputation system..

[EricH]

bearbot,

I think there are two things that might help you.

The first is listening to your English teachers when they discuss spelling and grammar. I'd be willing to bet that at least one or two of the red reps you've gotten are for posts that are very difficult to understand. (You can find out why the red reps are given by going to your user cp--the first thing that crops up should be the reputation panel where you can look at who gave you rep for what post and for what reason.)

The second is to understand how the system works--and how some people use it. Just because you write a post that you think is good doesn't mean that everybody else thinks it's good. Trust me, I've had that a few times. And sometimes, someone else might think it's a bad post. Some people also are very quick to hit the red rep button, why I don't know. Some use it to pound nails that stick out a little bit; others slam the big mistakes.

I will also say this: I don't look at rep when I evaluate a post's content. I look at the content (if I can understand it--if not, I'll look at as much as I can understand and try to decipher the rest). Not posting because people are giving you a lot of red is not the right response; asking for good rep may or may not work. I would highly recommend looking at why you get red rep a lot and see what you need to improve with your posts. After improving in the suggested manner, I would be surprised if you didn't start getting more greens coming your way.