I think we should be able to give out rep power or karma to members who help us out in the forums.  If you have a question and someone answers it quickly and with a great deal of information.  The more rep power you get, the more people will respect you and your posts.  Just a thought.  Maybe get a certain amout of reps per month and you can give them away as you see fit to do so.  Just a thought, they have it on other forums but since I like this one so much I was thinking maybe we could get it going here as well.  It would really let us see who's opinion is valued more than others.  Just throwing that out there.

Hey ScMuscle I think that is a good idea.

Only Slashdot has true Karma.

Here's it's just voting.  And that has proven to be nearly useless. 

Great idea!  It needs to be built into this forum software.

We used to have ratings here, where you could assign a number of stars to someone's post- But I remember it turning into a free-for-all with some guy named Mike0017, or something like that- He made some comments about a certain hockey player, and all of a sudden, everyone was voting down all of his posts so he had a negative score. It can be misused.
Besides that, there's a lot of info regarding this sport that isn't so black and white- Just because someone who may have a low "score" disagrees with someone with a higher one- Doesn't always mean they're wrong. Anyone who's really interested in whether or not they should listen to any member can always check out their post history through their profile to find out what sort of stuff they've been writing, up to their last 100 posts or so- Sure, it can take some time, and most people might not want to bother, but I think it means more than some sort of arbitrary voting system.
Someone please explain to me how Karma works?

Hi,

A very valid point, re: A public voting system.

However, I do think _some_ level of system to issue a specific rating of knowledge, credibility, or qualifications, may be of some use.

Maybe a field in the profile part (left of posts, under "Status") can be "Qualifications" (which must be proven), in order to reach such a level of credibility behind the information being issued?.

Poor information, from poor sources can indeed be rather dangerous, as Im sure everyone is already aware of.

good idea scmuscle