Is there a way to replace the rep bar with likes?

[delicjous]

Looked a little deeper... should be a great trial to learn.

You could use the great mod-skeleton from Replicant:
https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?t=323006

This select outputs a table of user and a like count:
SELECT whoadded, count(*) AS counter
FROM `vB_reputation` /*replace or change the table_prefix*/
GROUP BY whoadded

Then you could display it at "{vb:hook 'conversation_userstats'}"in the template "conversation_userinfo" and reference the like-count-user to the $conversation['userid']

Hope that will help you a bit.