Yeah, the theory (way back 20 years ago) was that you could set have actions occur when reputation got too low (like automatically banning somebody.) There probably was a carrot to go along with the stick too, but I don't know how it was implemented.
Reputation stops at a pretty low number so it stops on a lot of people. If you see somebody with all red chiclets under their name, that might be a red flag.
Most people give out positive rep though - and it's to say "thanks" or "well done" without having to create a post to accomplish the same thing - the "why waste time make post when click do trick" theory of Bisonville.
Apologies to:
What happened to me as a newbie was that I would try to give a certain poster a positive Rep and then I got an auto message that I had to spread it around and could not give the poster a positive rep until I gave another poster a positive rep and so I went into a random poster and arbitrarily gave THAT poster a positive rep so I could go back to the initial poster and give a positive rep.
So if you got a positive rep without a comment, don't take it too personally.
So there isn't a t-shirt?
Notorious--Bisonville all-time POTY
Proud member of TOHBTC[/B]