Just an alternative solution: Don't show the green jellies publicly. That's what they did on one other forum - nobody can see others' reputations but only their own.
One useful aspect (at least in the theory) of reputation point was to enable providing feedback without distracting from the thread itself and by making it visible only to oneself I think it sufficiently reduces any wrong motivation.
But OTOH, it can be argued that PM is a better way to convey feedback, especially negative feedback.
Basically, I wouldn't be heartbroken to see the reputation to go away, and would actually prefer this over showing the green jellies publicly. But I thought I'd at least mention the alternative as it seemed to work very well and put an end to that "reputation war" that was going on at the other forum.
As for post counts - I have same problems as it is used as a measuring stick when it shouldn't really matter that much. I'm all for quality over quantity, so to speak. I wonder if vBulletin supports a setting that post counts is visible to moderators only on thread view? That would at least address Vass's valid concern while encouraging us to focus on the post's quality rather than whether the post came from a certain member with a certain criteria. (Hopefully at least)