The bar under your profile is called the proto bar. It's essentially a system that tells if someone has been helpful to the site, or has caused trouble. When you do a lot of helpful things, like reporting post violations, answering questions in the Q&A forum, etc., the staff may reward you with a proto boost. However, if you cause a lot of trouble, like breaking the rules excessively, ignoring staff members, discriminating against other members, you might get a proto reduction. You can find out more about proto here in the Official Proto Energy Topic. For future reference, any questions you may have about proto energy are better posted there. Hope you're BZPower experience has been exciting so far! -Rez EDIT: Nearly forgot, but higher proto is good, while lower proto is bad. Basically, if the bar is filled to the right, then that member has positive proto energy (which is a good thing); while the opposite applies to the left side.