I give Rep+ to newbs that ask intelligent questions, use proper grammar & punctuation. I pay particular attention to those that have negative rep. If it looks like they were unjustly neg-repped, or if they are trying to be contributing members, I try to make them positive again. My 1st day here, my 1st post got me neg-repped by some asshole because I did like I was supposed to, used the "search" function to find an answer to my question, and then posted into a thread that had been dead for 2 years. Newbs make mistakes, and some Members are assholes, some are stupid and some are both. There's a "feel" for the culture here, and it takes some lumps in order to figure out where the boundaries are. However, if someone is walking around with less than 10 rep (meaning they've been neg-repped), and they send you a PM proposing some kind of business deal, you'd be stupid to do business with them. Also suspect are the people that have like 3 year old account, 400 posts and 19 rep. Sometimes that absence of any positive rep should tell you something. There's a lot of crooked fuckers here sometimes. They breeze in and breeze out, like in waves. Forum Staff can only ban them as they get caught, and usually someone has to get burned for that to happen. Rep is one factor when determining the character of another member. It's not an absolute indicator, but it's something to look at, and think about.
