Glad that you read this. It's a bit technical but I'll try to explain.
Every account on Hive Blockchain has two influence/authority stats: "Reputation" & "Hive Power."
Rep (Reputation) refers to how your content/posts/comments are seen by other users. It increases when you get Upvotes & decreases with Downvotes. Some interfaces like Ecency won't show your posts and comments at all if your Rep is low. (You can see it beside your user name: Your current Rep is 46.)
HP (Hive Power) is how much "shares" you have in the ecosystem. If you have %1 of all HP, it's like owning %1 of the community. HP decides many things, like how much your upvote is worth. How many resources you can use from the system per day. (With 1 HP you can only post/comment once per day.) HP also tells people outside of the blockchain how much people invested in it, making the currency #HIVE more valuable.
The thing is, HP can be turned into normal (we call it liquid) Hive currency & vice-versa. When you Power UP, you put your HIVE into HP. When you Power Down, you turn your HP into HIVE, but powering down takes a while to prevent the abuse of the system. (Last time I checked it was 13 weeks, but some leaders want to change that into 4 weeks.)
That's why Powering UP is a big deal in this website, because you're telling the system that you don't want to use your money outside of it, but for things inside of it (like Upvoting) which makes the system more valuable.
I hope I explained easily, if you didn't understand now, you can go back when you familiarize yourself with HIVE more.
Oh I haven't noticed your reply!
I see, I kinda figured the reputation part but the Hive was a bit confusing for me, things are starting to make more sense now, thanks for the explanation.
Btw what're the percentage and $ sign about while upvoting a comment?
Hope this post helps: https://leofinance.io/@tarazkp/how-does-curation-work-on-hive-what-are-the-rules-posting-and-voting-limits
Focus on the Voting Mana section. It's a year old so some rules have changed but the general idea is the same.
Voting Mana is about what I expected, honestly most mechanics are, but the only thing I'm having trouble understanding is why and how I would want to use them, for example I don't know how it'd affect you if I was to give you higher percentage upvotes, and how much difference a higher HP would make.
I guess I can only learn these things through practice anyway, and I don't want to turn your post into a tutorial for me 😂
As a new person it doesn't change anything, but someone with millions of HP which means vote is more than $1000+ can use %1 of that vote for $10+ per post 100 times per 1-vote worth of Voting Mana.
Yup~ you'll learn with time~