The topic is the reputation system here on CD.
Do you use it? Is it useless? Helpful? And important part of CD maybe? Does it change the way you look at someone? Why?
What is your view?
I am curious because about how people see me because of my low rep. 
Thanks
The only time I really take note of a personâs reputation is when itâs red. Otherwise I never use it to judge whether a personâs opinion is valid, or if Iâm going to pay attention to their posts.
I do leave reputation for people when I see really good posts (and occasionally really bad ones).
I use it to provide feedback on posts, positive or, rarely, negative. Itâs a lot more simple to give rep than send a PM and have to link to the post I have comments on. Also used sometimes if I find a post incredibly funny.
Itâs very nice to log on and see a âmade me laugh!â or âexcellent pointâ bit of rep on a post Iâve made. Everyone enjoys compliments in real life, and receiving positive rep gives me the same feeling. Itâs nice to have reassurance that someone took time to read your post and didnât think it to be absolute garbage.
Personally, I donât even pay much attention to the dots. When viewing someone, I look at their post quality above all else. If theyâre putting out very constructive posts and contributing to discussion, but have low rep, I make it a point to give them a bit, because they deserve it. However, if someone has red dots under their post count, it tends to catch my eye pretty quickly.
The most reputation (by # of reppers anyways) I ever got from a post was a painfully awful play on words, so I think that speaks to how good of an indicator it is of technical knowledge. At the same time, I try to give green dots for useful technical information, but Iâm not above giving points for especially funny jokes.
One of the kind of amusing things though is that since the # of points you give out is determined in part by how many points you have and the values of the green boxes have never changed the bar for getting a full green bar is significantly lower today than it was 5 years ago. Iâve always wondered if Brandon had a way to look at that, I think it would be really cool to see the exponential growth of reputation over time.
I donât like giving out bad rep (except maybe to spammers) but I do like giving out positive rep for posts I really like and to repair the bad rep of poster who get slammed for giving an unpopular opinion that everybody overreacts to and then brutally attack the poster for it.
Iâm with Koko, I rarely give out negative dots and I give out positive when I see people in the red who donât deserve it.
I give out positive rep when I want someone to know that I think they have done a nice job expressing themselves or supporting a particular line of thinking. I donât remember ever giving out negative rep but I have given neutral rep. I think that is very important for people to know that what they write in the privacy of their room still reaches a lot of people.
I look at stats too. I check how old someone reports themselves to be, how many replies a post has received or how many times a post has been viewed. I donât like to respond to posters who take a hard line and wonât listen to anyone else although I have been known to tilt at windmills. I donât like a a person who uses a screen name only and doesnât identify their real name somewhere so they can be addressed properly in a reply. And I really donât like spammers, especially sneaky ones who ask a technical question when they first log on and then spam later.
A low rep, and a low post count just means you are new.
I use it to provide positive feedback. I usually use IMs to convey messages of negative feedback for the first strike or so. Usually any post that I would give a red mark to, enough others have buried the person in a sea of red.
I donât think people look at low-repped posters differently (unless theyâre on the red scale). Iâve never noticed people treating my posts differently and always take them seriously (when the posts themselves are serious).
Personally I donât rep people, but thatâs because I donât really understand the system. I think itâs a nice system, not because it can tell you how knowledgable the poster is (as Ian pointed out, though it can give you a general idea sometimes), but because it can make a person smile and know his post made an impact on someone. And since most, if not all, FIRSTers are firm believers of GP, thereâs little risk of someone getting bad repps he doesnât deserve.
Personally, positive rep is a huge self-confidence boost for me. I think thereâs (at least this was true for me) a slight fear in posting at first upon starting to post here, for fear of coming off too strongly or being ridiculed for a differing opinion or comments being taken the wrong way. At least for me, getting positive rep changed that and increased my confidence at posting.
I will give positive rep for a wide variety of reasons, most often to someone just starting to post on CD. I will also, like Ed and Sam, give positive rep if I think someone has received negative rep unfairly. Iâm more inclined to give neutral rep rather than negative rep if I think someone needs negative feedback on a post, but most often Iâll send a pm to the poster.
I will look at rep in conjunction with post count prior to reacting to a post that is written in a fashion to be non-helpful to the CD community, but other than that, if you are a middle of the roader and building rep in a slow and steady fashion, you are good to go! 
They are only dotsâŚ
⌠somebody had to say it.
I agree with all above, but I also wanted to throw in an additional way that I use it. If I am looking for someone from a particular team to ask a question, I often search the members list, and then send a PM based on the reputation & role. Chances are if they have good reputation, they know what is going on with their team and/or can point me to whomever does.
But donât âworryâ about the low rep. As long as you donât have red, 99.999% of the community will take your posts just as seriously as anyone elses.
Itâs a very effective method of keeping all the âMe too and I agreesâ out of a thread. It also connects the community a little more. The more communication the better.
The cool thing about CD is that there are so many wonderful people from the FIRST community who post or who have posted here, helping to build and sustain the CD community. Some of those wonderful people can become heroes and role models to you and when they appreciate a post that has been made and take the time to rep it, it can absolutely make your day. Iâve seen posts sprinkled throughout the years of participating in CD that are along the lines of, âOh wow! I just got repped by Andy Baker!â, and I know how much that meant to the person on the receiving end of that rep. Itâs along the lines of having the great role models stop and talk with you at a competition or send you a private message of encouragement or wisdom.
Thatâs whatâs great about the reputation system. What is not great about it is that some people donât really take the time to understand that participating in CD can be a very valuable experience and they focus on trying to get those green dots as quickly as they can, instead of letting them accumulate naturally.
Humor and knowledge have been mentioned in this thread as reasons for giving positive rep. I think there are other good reasons as well, such as asking thoughtful questions or bringing the discussion back on topic when it has strayed off course.
Another thought is that everyone starts out with one green rep. We build our reputation from there, some more slowly than others. The key word is build.
Jane
I completely agree with Jane.
I give green rep points if someone makes a really good point in the hopes that they will continue to make really good points (and therefore continue to teach me and others)
I use the system to give credit where credit is due but I personally donât like the system.
I am a super moderator over at badcaps.net forums and there they disabled the reputation system. At least at that forum it was somewhat useless; usually one could see how good someone is based on how they post and what they post. I along with a few members sometimes have very unpopular opinions; I know that weâd get spammed with negative rep over it.
Over here that doesnât seem to be as big of an issue although in the past I have gotten some negative rep for IMHO stupid things. One was for questioning the opinion of some who the person giving the rep was âabove being questionedâ. Another was for making a point that the person giving the rep thought was âunhelpfulâ. There are other thigns Iâve been given that were kinda dumb but thatâs beside the point.
The other thing Iâd like to point out is that humans typically have a stronger reaction to negative feedback as oppossed to positive feedback. As my dad once told me, "it takes 100 'Atta-Boy!âsâ to counteract one âyou [stink]!â " This why I rarely if ever give negative (or for that matter neutral) feedback.
This is exactly why I rarely give negative rep unless the person is just generally being harassing or offensive and wonât listen to anything else. I prefer neutral rep if they are being jerks and occasionally even use pos rep to ask them to chill out.
Iâma paraphrase my friend Santosh, the moment I start caring about dots on the internet I hope someone hits me.
Just mirroring everything said above already. Low rep doesnât mean anything unless youâre in the red zone, which isnât good at all. Likewise, having the max rep doesnât mean youâre Andy Baker (Unless you are Andy Baker, in which the previous statement becomes invalid).
All in all, a well thought-out and intelligent post benefits the community regardless of reputation (And it may even earn you some ;))
I havenât been giving (or receiving) much reputation, but I think that Iâm going to start.
When reading a post, I donât pay much attention to reputation. Even someone with few posts and therefore a low reputation can contribute to a thread.