No they can but it doesnt count for or against. It will show up as a grey box. Which doesnt have any effect on your rep at all. I have a comment left by someone with 2 posts. But it didnt count against my rep.ah, so its not just the new members that are limited. So only staff members can give rep points?
I always just assumed that if a poster was a mod or had quite a lot of posts, then that information would be more credible and noteworthy. I don't necessarily think a rep system is needed, and it looks like its already causing more controversy than what it's worth.
That isnt necessarily true. There are several members that have a few thousand posts but dont really have such great knowledge. Yes the Mods are choosen for the expertise and such but just because we are Mods all of our advice should be taken without caution.
I have given several examples as to how each Mod has their area of expertise. Would you take Vern's advice in Windows over Mine? Would you take My advice over Vern's in hardware? Just because of a post count? No.
The Rep system will be worth it. But come on it has been a WEEK. Give it time to get working properly. Give it time for people to rep and for the kinks to get worked out.
Griping every day that this person cant give rep or this person gave this rep or this person didnt give rep is not going to help the system move forward. We have to all work together to make this work.
Us Mods and Admins are still trying to work out all the kinks ourself. We are still messing with the system trying to get it setup for the optimal performance for EVERYONE. As well as make sure that people that should meet at least the minimum requirements to Rep do and those that shouldnt are not.
What we do know...
50 POSTS
10 REP points
This is what you need in order to be able to have your Rep COUNT toward another person.
If you are new you start off with 10 Rep points. If you have been here a while you should have 10 already. You get 1 Rep point for every YEAR you have been here and 1 Rep point for every 1,000 POSTS.
The amount of Rep you give to another member is based on a scale. This scale depends on the time on the site, the number of posts you have and if i am not mistaken your Rep to begin with.
So if you have only 1 year of service to the site and 1,000 posts with 10 rep you will give 1 point of rep. Roughly!!!!
Now myself i can give ROUGHLY 25 Rep Points. Based on my almost 5 years of service, my 19+K posts and the fact i already have 140 Rep Points.
This is a rough scale!!!! Do not take it as the hard facts cause i do not know if the starting Rep counts.
This will work, if we get everyone to work together and give Rep where it is deserved for posts that are helpful, meaningful, serve multiple purposes and can help people out.