[Glathannus]

"Reputation" and "Rep Power" are two different things. Your Reputation is supposed to be a reflection of the respect or appreciation that people have toward your specific post(s). Your Rep Power is the amount of influence you can have on other peoples' Reputation. Rep Power is based on various factors like how long you've been a member, how active you've been, and how well-respected you are.

It's quite possible to have the most Rep Power without necessarily having the most Reputation, as Maou has proven by being a combination of one of the oldest and one of the most active members, in addition to fairly well-respected. Some people may edge Maou out on one factor or another, but currently no single person beats him on all three factors combined. That's how he can be a "Rep Power: 7" user ranked underneath another user such as Ringo~Bingo with "Rep Power: 4".

For quite awhile I was tied with pariscombo on second-highest Reputation, and EmilScherbe was slightly ahead of us. But recently several people with a lot of Rep Power approved a couple of my latest posts. Some non-native English speakers might take comfort in speculating that my Reputation is the highest because "this community is biassed toward native English speakers", but the fact is I've been more active lately than both of those other "Top Three" folks combined. If there were enough new posts coming from each of us "Top Three", we'd probably all be gaining Reputation at around the same rate (observers would find something new they like from each of us), and EmilScherbe would have stayed ahead of me. I didn't ever expect to pass him.

If Ringo~Bingo keeps up his current behavior of being extremely active, and trying to please everyone to the degree that he's practically begging for Reputation, it's possible that he could eventually overtake me on Reputation, and Maou on Rep Power. So far Ringo~Bingo really has gained a lot of Reputation in a very short amount of time, and I'm not one to dispute whether or not he deserves to be ranked where he is, because I believe in the self-policing and dynamic nature of the system, even if there is a lot more Reputation I could be gaining if people didn't have to "spread it around". Once again this community is not intended to be The Official Glathannus Fanclub. Show everyone else the respect they earned too. I'm not saying everyone deserves respect - I'm just saying a lot more people have it due, than the amount who are actually acknowledged.