"So how come my reputation total still goes up?"

It doesn't. Your experience points increase, for logging in and casting votes. This has been explained to you several times, but hey, you've only been here for 11 years, and having things repeatedly explained, proven and demonstrated to you has had zero impact. Your reputation as someone who for the most part gives awful and more often than not incorrect advice grows.

The Role of XP in PerlMonks:"Finally, enlightenment happens. Experience points are only a detail, an epiphenomenon. Your true love is the PerlMonks community itself. The community is the universal element that forms the foundation for PerlMonks, that allows XP to even exist. From that point on, XP is no longer important; it just is. Living a good life means helping people, not accumulating XP. Some saints, knowing enlightenment, have been known to eschew XP altogether. Others are sanguine about the XP system, knowing that it got them this far, so it must be OK. Don't mistake quiet satisfaction for inertia or narrow-minded conservatism.".