Hi Ladiestorm, I'm pretty new and I was confused when I first joined too. What I figured out is that there is no longer a set of scales and you can't like posts anymore (as far as I can tell). Instead it is a little medal at the bottom left of a post, beside the "Blog this post" and "Report this post" buttons.

The green bars under someones name is how much rep (reputation) they have, how many rep "points" other people have given them. How many rep "points" you give out when you give someone rep depends on several factors..

The original post is very outdated (2007)..

Hope that helps.