All joking aside, the fact that negative reputation was there for members of the forum to point out that something you're doing is less than desirable was a good thing. God only knows I had plenty of negative reputation, and I was eventually banned, and later unbanned. It taught me a lesson. I was rewarded for my contributions as much I was reprimanded for acting like a child. It seems a tad too politically correct to have the option to give positive reputation, and not have the option for negative. Is it really just a matter of it being abused?
I mean, first we have a ridiculously long delay posts to deter spammers, whereas we could take proactive action against spammers by limited access to other parts of the forum until a certain number of posts has been met(We do have the same feature for the posting of pictures, and nobody has a problem with it..), and we also don't have negative reputation because it's either offensive to those receiving it, or it's abused by idiots who would be better off temporarily suspended from accessing the forum.