man i have no idea what's even going on in this thread anymore

In response to Stijn's question, most of the potential problems are things that don't appear right away - especially sensitive members leaving the forum because of low reputation, people bragging about high reputation, people repeatedly going offtopic to talk about someone's reputation (similar to how some people go offtopic to discuss post counts), and perhaps most importantly, especially sensitive members being hesitant to post anything potentially controversial out of fear for their precious reputation points.

Of course, some might consider those to be good things.