Got two likes, rep got up by 5 each time, so that's a thing. But as far as I understand it, rep doesn't do anything in the mechanics of the forum. Only a confidence/trust/quality rating like reddit's karma.
What I'm confused about is contributor vs credits. If you pay credits to see a link, are you still locked out because you don't have a great contributor level? Or is it one currency OR the other? My credits seem to go up with each message (that I'm focusing on doing with great quality, may explain why it isn't updating exactly at the same time, there is a manual verification?), but contributor goes up by ten? (I'm new^^). And if it does go up by 10, and 5 for rep, why are some people having contributor and rep not multiple of 10 and 5?
And finally, if you are locked out of links until great contributor level, you are supposed to be unable to leech if I'm making a good analogy. So how is it that so many people have a negative score? Why can they leech if they don't contribute enough?
So many questions. Half of the details are hidden for reasons that you may not gain the system, but the other half the FAQ doesn't really answer clearly I feel.