Torkell's idea about "bonuses for high rep and penalties for low rep" was half of the reasons I even started this whole thing. While as for now reputation is indeed, as EvilMike says, in a way just a "funny" feature, if it'd have any effect on "serious" features (such as posting or creating new threads) it would suck. If this number means nothing, I don't want it to decide about my privileges.

Edit: Also, a disablity to start new threads is just another reason to off-topic in the existing ones. You can already sometimes see newcomers saying that "I'm just posting here because it didn't let me create a new thread". The negrepped people could do just the same but all the time. It's not a solution.