If you haven't noticed yet, steemit added a reputation system,
that is most likely used to fight the recent influx of bots that have appeared literally out of nowhere. This system will definitely prove itself useful over the course of the steemit platform. We have yet to see the reputation system prove its worthiness of the the GLORIOUS god, that is steemit.
The numbers don't go above 9.
the reputation system is like levels, but doesn't scale indefinitely. It's just a scale from -8 to 9 . Your level depends on what reputation people upvote you. Each step is 10 times more than the last. Also if a negative reputation person upvotes you, your reputation doesn't decrease, else this would be abused.
The benefits of having reputation system based on a scale not levels
The goal of the reputation system is to show how much quality content said person rolls out, not how many upvotes said person has in total. This means the reputation system is in place just to show users that that person is actually a person, not a computer pretending to be human. However I'd love to grind me some reputation levels that would scale indefinitely