Reputation number is a bit iffy, but I personally, like many in the comments like it. Growing the number is one of the things I have been trying to do, granted not trying real hard because that involves the work of making post, but still it is a slow grow number. With the lack of bid bots on Hive, it seems to me that the Reputation Score reputation is improving somewhat.
I do agree with, I think it was steevc, that the vote total is the most useless metric when it comes to being meaningful. (650 votes is a big big number, reality payout less than 5.50)
Yep, there are quite a few who like the rep, including me - even though it is useless :)