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Well, this is a huge surprise and even though I tend to be unemotional by nature, I literally felt a lot of feelings while reading this!  :)

I will skip the emotional acceptance speech and jump to the chase and say:

Thank you very much, this made my day and came at a great time.  I have a huge amount of respect for you, so this meant a lot to me!

Hey, @practicalthought.

While this does talk about things in a broader context, let me just echo that whatsup and others like her are writers, and that one does not need to be technical, classically trained, etc., to become one.

I also understand where you're coming from regarding the reputation system. I'll even agree the system itself isn't broken, nor is it necessarily the best at judging quality or value, either. Which is probably why it should just go. People like me who care about it and have done what they can to make it meaningful can live without it.

We also need to do away with quality. Not in the way that people have been saying, however. I mean, we don't look at things in terms of quality, really, so we might as well use some other words to describe things. Like, "I like it," or "It's not for me."

Quality isn't in the time spent, or in the words used, or the mastery of grammar, all things that could be and often is used to determine it. Quality is in the connections made, or in the knowledge gained, or in the inspiration given. Whether that happens when we read someone's post often speaks just as much about us as it does the creator.

Instead of using quality as the benchmark, whatever that might mean to everyone here, or saying, down with quality all together, I wouldn't mind us just saying write what you want, and if you get out of it what you want—engagement, upvotes, resteems, friends, etc.—then it's all good.