Providing identities of those who provided reputations can lead to two likely outcomes.
One is that reputations would be less used because there is significantly less willingness to act in an uninhibited manner when one's identity can be determined. In this case, the current "anonymity" of giving reputation points means people have nothing preventing them from acting on their whims, grudges, etc. This goes for both + and -, as both would likely be reduced if users can be identified in regards to which reputation points they give to which player.
The second outcome is the development of player conflicts that arise when the dispraise button gets used too much on the wrong user. Some users might be more sensitive than others about reputation, and may seek to get personal with whoever gave them negative reputation.
Both cases are undesirable. While the current system is imperfect, the alternative of revealing identities of those who applaud and dispraise have potentially worse consequences.
Ok sure, but so far the above has not been suggested, and I don't think it will be.
I tend to only rep people if they have negative, offensive posts or they have good ideas and interesting points or facts that they bring to the discussion. But many people's rep are just messed up due to spammed rep.
QFT
An idea would be to applaud or dispraise certain posts, a bit like you do on /.
Somewhat what I was suggesting. It's rather amusing, but due to the fact that another forum which I used to frequent always had rep
per post, I assumed it was the same on this side (thinking that when you clicked their name next to the post, it was from that post). But I guess not.
So use your idea and mine together - have it per post, but let the people who get the rep see which posts they got the rep for. This way, if they cared about rep at all they could use the posts as general indicators (the comments would also help here). Of course if the people who are giving rep are being retarded...well something could be figured out regarding that also I'm sure.
Unfortunately it might get a bit more complicated with this system, unlike the current no-strings-attached simple (abusable) system.