Sometimes, I wish we didn't have rep.

It works fine. I haven't seen one person with negative rep who didn't blatantly earn it. Most the people with negative rep fixed it over time by fixing themselves. I think that is wonderful to see. If there wasn't the big glooming negative rep beneath their name, they probably wouldn't have felt a need to change their conduct.

***Example- The was a new guy many months passed that was constantly making silly topics and just flooding the forum with tasteless nonsense. Needless to say, he amassed a good amount of negative rep quickly. Pretty quickly, that person curbed their posting count, started making more relevant post, didn't allow other peoples opinions to weigh to heavily on them, and in time became a well respected forum member. They stuck true to themselves, but they changed the way they post into a more like-able manner.

About rep being given for jokes with no substance, I don't see an issue. It is up to the individual to judge the validity of post for themselves. Reputation only serves to allow you to get an idea of how the community feels about a persons postings over time, but it can't replace your own judgement.

Contrary to popular belief, everybody is NOT equal. We were all created equal, yes, but by the time your making posts on the internet you're not an innocent baby anymore. You are what you choose to be and people will judge you based on that. This is nonsense talk that every opinion is equally valid. It is insane, Utopian babble, really. I don't even like to say Utopian because that implies that your fantasy land, where everybody and everything has the same value, is somehow ideal. It is not. It's horrifying.

Furthermore, just so that you can get an idea of where this kind of anti-logic stems from, you need to take a serious look inside your own mind and start asking, "Why?"

Why do I feel that everybody is equal? What is the root of this thought? Am I afraid of having less value than another person? Is my ego fragile? Am I trying to protect myself by changing the outside world? Am I pushing my beliefs on others so that I feel safe? Why am I afraid of being worth less than another person? Where does this fear come from? What can I do to change myself, not other people, to eradicate this fear from my mind?

I think it matters more if you're actually taking part in the Dark Souls aspects of the forum. When I was it was sometimes helpful to see the reps of the people responding to my posts, just so that I could have an idea of how accurate those posts might be, though it doesn't always work that way either. I have relatively high rep and I was wrong all the time when I was posting there. Aside from that though, it could be helpful in that regard, but here, in Off-topic, I don't think it really makes a difference. Most of us who are here every day know each other now. You all know who I am despite my rep. Know the kinds of things I say, and what my values are. My rep doesn't really matter here for that, among other reasons, and I think the mods recognized that and made it not count here. Also could be part of the reason a lot of us don't really care about it anymore, because we've become more permanent off-topic posters

I think some people are forgetting one obvious flaw in this system.. Though I'm not sure how many of you were around for it but oh well.

Basically a while back, a member called buggy virus (remember him), decided it would be fun and a good mockery to request people down rep him in his sig, just for the hell of it. He got to something like -30/40, then upon requesting positive got back up and now he's on like 70.

There's nothing wrong with this in my opinion, but it kinda shows that we should take this whole system with a pinch of salt, as it's pretty easy to gain/lose rep as you please, depending on the type of posts and threads you make. (i have no problem in admitting the vast majority of my rep was attained from jokes)

Long and short of it is- this whole system is a pissing contest, and while it can be helpful to newer members, other than that, it's just another number.