Now, to some extent, this makes sense -- just definitionally, you would expect people who have been around longer to have a higher (potential for) reputation. Another proposal, since people weren't fond of the idea of restricting cases for which reputation could validly be applied: positive only, no negative.

As for cooldude, whom I'm pretty sure I did not myself negrep: Asking questions is fine. We all do it. But there are better and worse ways to ask questions, a concept which goes back a long way, and cooldude did not go out of his way to make his questions easy to answer, and did not really respond to requests for further clarification, which nobody ever likes.