I noticed at least one thread about it on the SO.
Right now it's being tweaked so that it can actually be a useful feature on the board. At some point, it began being abused and right now, it's not really even useful other than sending a short message in lieu of a PM. The reputation points themselves have become meaningless.
There's a feature on the board that allows us to lock out noobs from starting a thread until they reach a certain reputation level and/or have a certain number of posts. This will almost eliminate spam threads, and will also allow noobs with good attitudes to advance.
Right now, we're playing with the calculations so that it becomes more in line with the way it was designed to be used. The default setting (and one that you can't change without digging deep into the php code) is that you get one green bar for every 100 points of reputation. We had folks that were able to give out 500 x that with one hit.
It's my opinion, that longevity and even total posts should have more of an impact than two new guys getting into a circle spekFest and jumping into the top 10 of reputation.
Right now, it's set so that you can give out 15 per day and can't hit the same person again until you give out 15 others. The calculation has also been changed to put more weight on #of posts and time on the board than on total amount of reputation that you have.
This shouldn't reduce drastically the amount that you can receive as I don't think most folks give out 15 per day anyway, but it will reduce the amount you can receive from any one person.
It's possible that the whole thing will need to start over at zero due to the inflated numbers that most folks have. Especially since it will put new people at a disadvantage as far as never ever being able to pass anyone on the ranking scale.
Your thoughts?
The goal here isn't to be mean, but simply to make the feature mean something and even use it as a way to make the board better for everyone.