Before the Downs I used to frequent a forum with no reputation system where an user's reputation kind of depended on the number of posts - the more the better. It was a serious forum with relatively strict moderators, though, so no spam posts were allowed (except in the mirth section where users could eg just post jokes and others comment on them like "Haha!
"). There I was much keener on how many posts I had.
I really like the Downs' rep system. It encourages to write proper posts instead of just trying to add up to the post count.