Forum Trying to grasp the User Reputation System
 

Im just going to toss all my questions about this confusing tool into this thread. First off - the thing makes no sense to me. I change things, and nothing happens on the front end. For instance - my forum is a very "short term" forum. People don't stick around longer than 3-6 months at the most. As a result, nobody is going to get 100, 300, 500, 1000 positive ratings for their reputation. Especially since the default is only "1" point for every vote.

1) How can I change that "1" to a higher number? I know how to do it for the Admin, but don't see the option for anyone else. I also know that the higher the users reputation gets, the higher their voting power gets. But I want to modify the default so everyone starts with 10 points power or something more logical. Not every forum has users for 10 years and commonly sees users with 500+ reputation votes.

2) How do I change it for a Super Moderator?

I tried lowering the thresshold for reputation "Levels" as well. Instead of the standard, I made it 0, 10, 50, 75, 100, 125, 150, 200, 250, 300, 350, 400. I was hoping this would make it faster for the user to get more than one green square under their username and start to draw out the more helpful users. Didn't work. Nothing changed. I have a user with 78 points (thanks to me Admin voting him up 6 times as otherwise he'd have a whopping "2" points). Now he is literally 4 or 5 levels up, and still only one green square. What gives? This system seems like it was created by a highly intelligent individual, but customizing it seems to fail on several levels. Because of its complexity. So:

3) How do I modify things so that green squares start to appear more quickly?

Thank you.