They grey bar is related to your post count.
It becomes fully purple at 1000 posts.
If you hover your mouse over it - you will see a text value of your status.
hth
Welcome, btw!
It indicates the number of posts you have made, but it automatically screens out any crap posts made just to bump up your tally.
At a certain point of crapness, the system PM's one of the Mods, who comes along and gives you a severe ticking off and resets your counter to zero, thus putting you right back to 'newbie' status.
The funny thing is, due to a technical gliche, everytime we have 'zero'd' someone, they never post again!! Very odd! :grin:
Mal
Hope that helps
The purple bar levels are:
0-10 posts "Just popped in"
10-20 posts "Finding my feet"
20-30 posts "Getting there"
30-40 posts "ooo this is exciting"
40-50 posts "Look at meee"
50-100 posts "You looking at me?"
100-200 posts "Boy, can I type!"
200-300 posts "I need to get out more"
300-400 posts "A slave to my art"
400-500 posts "I've got chair sores"
500-1000 posts "Super human rambling"
1000+ posts "Godlike"
you also get a free 'full up' bar if you are a site mod, or administrator.