I am not sure I understand how reputations work in this forum. How does it help to gain reputation? Also if someone gave you a reputation for a particular post, is there a way to find out who was the one who gave it?

There's no real benefit of having higher reputation.

Reputation only acts as an ego booster for users.

It's a way to encourage users to make useful and good quality posts.

Users can't see who gave them reputation points except when the giver mentions his id (or name) in "Comment".

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Read All Rules Before Making Any Post | E-Investing on Google+

The higher the reputation, the easier it'd be to gain credibility among other users. Especially when one cites an odd factoid and even provides a link to support it, and others are pondering whether to check it out or not.

Users need not worry about links placed on the site.

I personally check each and every link that is placed on this forum.

Almost all links placed on this site, point to reliable and secure sites.

If any user finds a link on this forum that shouldn't be there, he should immediately inform me and I will examine it.

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Read All Rules Before Making Any Post | E-Investing on Google+