Of all kinds of internet forums out there, I would think that a site about college admissions has the most need for a reputation system.
CC is a place for sharing information and giving advice - advice that many posters will follow or strongly consider. Some kind of credibility has to be assigned to our posters so we can differentiate between who has real experience and knowledge, and who is just shooting the breeze.
Even though posts from irrelevant forums such as the Cafe and HSL have been filtered, post count alone is still a very misleading indicator of credibility. The user who habitually contributes posts such as “Yes I think you have a good chance” or “No I don’t think so” or “That is a good question, I would like to know as well” can rack up posts pretty quickly, while attaining negligible knowledge about the college admissions process.
I think it necessary to consider a simple reputation system which, of course, is restricted by the reputation of users. For example, a user with 1 bar of reputation points cannot +rep a user with 5 reputation bars. A user with high reputation can -rep posters. And, well…I’m sure everyone understands how a rep system works.