I hate to ask but what exactly are reputation points and how do you get them?

you get them from hitting the green arrow  next in people's post

 

 

they're use for

 

saying thnkz to some1 who helped you

agreeing with some1's post / reply

done outta respect for others

saying good job on some1's mod they released or their picture they put together

 

( in some ways in shows how helpful / how much you can be trusted in the community to  although its mainly used for the above options )

Correction: You get them when OTHER people hit the green arrow next to YOUR posts.

They allegedly measure reputation in the community. They are, however, a poor guide to actual reputation/helpfulness/whatever. In addition, they are never used for any official purpose (when we look at members from a moderation standpoint, we don't even consider rep). The one exception is rep abuse - doing things like creating alt accounts to upvote yourself is very much against the rules. Other than "rep abuse = bad", rep is effectively an irrelevant number on the internet.

^^ Agreed

to me rep points are irrelevant never understood why this site had it anyways