It is a visual guide to your reputation. You get points if someone feels your posting has been helpful enough to them to 'add rep' for you. The more important/powerful (in reputation and/or management terms) the person giving the rep is, the more points you get. So an admin giving you rep would be worth more than a newbie member with no postings to their name.

By the same token, you can also get negative reputation points if someone feels strongly that you are being unhelpful, disruptive or giving bad advice.

So it is really just a way of quickly measuring the reputation of the person providing an answer to a question.

benefits: none

implications: post stuff that is helpful to others. The more people like what you post, the more of those little green squares you get. The opposite is true also, you can get bad rep too.

That is if people bother to give the rep in the first place lol

What is the color of a bad rep. (Good one is a green)

Orange. It's usually hard to come by, but I have a knack for it in heated discussions

You know your are right . I have had people that were of immense benefit to me and I did not give them reps just because I do not know what to do. I suggest a little info pack for newbies that contains this info. The FAQ sectiion couldn't help in this regard.