I've noticed a change since the forum software upgrade: The rate of repping seems to be WAY down, especially (or maybe even exclusively) from new members. If others have noticed this, too, it would be interesting. After all, the process is exactly the same, only the icon has changed. Of course, it could just be me, but determining this should be fairly quick, as you could look at reps/month (not points per month) for the months before and after the change.

Frankly, I almost didn't bring this up, since I felt it was fairly obvious. The old icon was a colorful little scale. The new icon is what? A black hole? A squashed bug? A black starburst? A....well, I won't say, but it rhymes with heinous. However, this is the way certain graphics seem to be going. Compare VS2012 to VS2010. The icons have regressed back to Windows 3.1 styles. I have very little graphical sense, but even I know this is being artsy for artsyness sake. You want you icons to have some kind of meaning. Leaving out color and substance may be modern, but it still sucks. However, it would be really interesting if somebody was able to do a study against the database in general to show whether or not the average reps per month has dropped off since the upgrade, as it would show that the icon is demonstrably horrible.