Reputation is a nice tool to have on a forum. There are however some positive and negitive drawbacks to it. One of the primary drawbacks is the fact that people can leave bad rep without signing their name to the rep that was given.

A suggestion I would offer is one that was used on Digitalpoint forum. On DP when you give someone negitive rep it cost you 1 point to give that rep. This has caused members to be more selective about giving out neg rep. The reasons I believe for this type of system on DP was to prevent members from giving neg rep for something that they just did not agree with or prevent some members from just being malisous. Just a thought.