I know personally, the new FT has improved my experience. With PM's and WWBTNFTTP and reputation (to a lesser extent) I have made more personal contacts with people that I never did before. This is a good thing.

I have used reputation to give a little gold star to people that made me laugh, or think about something or help me. I have not given any dings, but if I did it would be for something posted that was grossly out of line or inappropriate. (I'm sure there would be a "piling on" by others at that point as well) I would NOT give a ding because I disagreed on principle with someone. In fact, I can think of some threads where I would ding a person I agreed with and bling one I didn't.

If you don't care about reputation statistical mumbo-jumbo or the feature altogether, please ignore the rest of the post... (I warned you)

I think I've figured out how the points work. One, because I just like knowing how things work, and because I didn't understand why my rep went up a lot from one bling and not so much from others. I'm sure if I was wondering, others were as well.

There are two factors involved, how many reputation points you have and accumulate, and how many points you can bling or ding someone. Have and accumulate is simple arithmetic; blings add and dings subtract. But how much?

You have reputation altering powers (I'm Reputation Man!!) that depend on your post count, your own reputation and your length of time on the board. (N.B. I'm not sure if the post count and length of time are from day 1 of FT or day 1 of FT v2.0, but with that caveat, let's continue)

For example, If I get a bling from my good friend jfe, it would count for 9 points:

5,000+ posts = 5 points
200-300 reputation points = 2 points
2+ years on the board = 2 points

The blings I give are worth 3 points
1,000+ posts = 1 point
1+ year on the board = 1 point
~100 rep points = 1 point

I didn't read anywhere that there are maximums or minimums, or if the thresholds have to be crossed to take effect (e.g. does someone with 1,200 posts have 2 points for post count or 1). You only need 250 posts and 20 rep points to alter reputation, so are under all the thresholds.

If I'm wrong, please correct me.

Have a nice day