Change the Reputation algorithm or else get rid of it - It is ridiculous as it is

in #steemit6 years ago (edited)


However it was premised, any new person who joins steemit and follows events for a day or two, and whose attention is drawn to the ideal and concept of the Reputation score, and compares it with the steemit reality of today, will with good reason conclude that we are a community of jokers and time wasters.

A person’s reputation is the estimate in which he or she is held by the public in the place where he or she is known. It encapsulates that public’s collective opinion of him or her, established over time.

That is how I understand reputation in everyday life. It is how any decent person I dare say, understands it to be even on steemit.


Thus a high reputation score means you are held in high esteem and honor, respected and loved by the community. A low reputation score on the other hand means you are abhorred and a suspect member of the community. Should yours drop to negatives so much that your works are all grayed out, and you cannot even influence the community anymore in terms of up votes and downvotes, then you are basically an outcast.

If I am right, that is the ideal on which the Steemit reputation score was premised on. Two roles, to be specific - in @arcange’s words in last year’s post - one, as an indicator that shows how ‘trusted or appreciated by the community’ you are; and two, as a tool that prevents users with low reputation to harm others.

Overall, it is the way the steemit community measures the value you have brought, how it approves of it. When you just join, you begin with a reputation score of 25. Henceforth, it will increase or decrease depending on your actions and the response of the community.

But is this the case? My experience of the last weeks has left me questioning the functionality of the Steemit Reputation Algorithm in such a manner, in my opinion, as makes the Reputation some sort of a joke!

What am I saying? In black and white, I think, no – I know, that the Reputation Algorithm is shit. It is being gamed.

Take a look at the Reputation ranking so far. You can check it out on http://steemocean.com/reputation. The account with the highest reputation is @haejin at 80. I dont know which one is the lowest as only 1000 top accounts are reflected there, but the lowest i so far know of is @wang at Reputation -16 and lately @berniesanders at -11


My interest is in regard to the high reputations. Are @haejin, @steemsports and @knozaki2015 the most esteemed members of the steemit community? Regarding the highest Reputation holder specifically, namely @haejin, Is he the most honored, most trusted, most respected, loved member? Yes or no, it doesn’t matter, as any opinion to that end is really subjective. But we can all agree that he is arguably the most controversial name you will hear on steemit, and i am picking him out because of this.

Whether or not he deserves the controversy, is a gray area i am not interested in, but the black- and-white area we can all agree on is that to hold the highest reputation on steemit means that you are free of any dirt. In a sense it means you are its accredited flag bearer, the exemplar of its practice, values and norms and morals. Can that be said of @haejin? The controversy, like I said - deserved or underserved - means that @haejin is not this.

How did @haejin achieve the highest reputation? Is his reputation an indicator of the overall steemit public opinion of him? If not, how come he now stands tall above the rest of us?

What is conspicuously observable about the @haejin situation is how he achieved it. The fact I will unrepentantly say, and which is not a castigation of @haejin, but rather an observation of how well he identified and exploited a loop hole in the Reputation algorithm, is that @haejin’s reputation is a creation of one whale account, namely, @ranchorelaxo. Those who follow the @haejin controversy know this all too well.

That brings me to the first fix steemit.inc needs to make not because of @haejin as there are so many out there who would gladly do what he is doing if they had the resources, but rather because it is the right thing to do if we are improve steemit as a platform.

Here is my suggestion, which you are free to modify as you like: Tweak the algorithm to include among others, the following parameters

Collective opinion.

This would mean that your reputation score only increases or decreases depending on how many members of the ‘steemit public’ upvote or down vote you respectively. This is good for everyone.

It would trim down the power of the individual and encourage and promote the power of the collective.

What this means is that one pissed off whale does not witch-hunt and flag you to negatives! My bet is that @wang and @berniesanders were flagged that low not by the majority steemit membership (to whom i suggest this power should be vested), but by an individual or a few.

Any such flagging (which i doubt would go that far) would instead require that any such aggrieved/concerned individual must solicit or convince the large whale community of the necessity to flag you.

This would promote a sense of collective responsibility from members of the steemit community, promote lobbying, ensure that out of the many heads involved, reason can be argued to prevail, and eliminate unjustified flagging. Of course by the time 100 or so whales find it fit to combine and flag you away, then it only means that you deserve it.

The game-trick therefore of having an alt account with high reward shares for upvoting and lifting the reputation of your second reward minting account would be nullified.

Time based index

As it is, you can pirouette and shoot your reputation from the default 25 to 70+ in 24 hours. All you have to do is pay a bot with a high reputation and/or with, a high reward share. Bots of course are hardly the ‘steemit public’ and if they get to influence the reputation of members, then there is a problem.

The easiest and quickest solution would be to say, get rid of bots. But you and I know that is impractical. Bid bots come with some investment advantages steemit requires. And then of course, even in our day to day life, we are increasingly having to live and deal with robots, so we can’t really say we get rid of them, rather we have to see ways in which to make sure we humans retain the prerogative, especially over moral and ethical matters that require ‘thinking’ and ‘conscience’ such as the Reputation.

And then of course, even if we could get rid of bots, one could still be able to use the backroom favor of whale ‘friends’.

So what is the solution? The first way to resolve this loophole, for me, is to make the Reputation score a time-based index. What this means is that besides the requirement to be upvoted by a collective majority, your reputation should in part depend on how long you have been consistently upvoted/downvoted. That way, by the time your reputtaion plunges to negatives, it means you really deserve it just as it means the same, by the time it climbs to 80's.

It would also be advantageous in that, you need to pay bots (unprofitably I might say, and therefore discouragingly) for months to lift your reputation.

and then of course, it would cut out the reputation an indicator of how long you have been a member of the platform, which is for me what it should partly reflect!

Conclusion

In his post two years ago, @dantheman observed that

This score (Reputation score) is a simple algorithm that could be changed at any time and will be tweaked. If there are problems with it or if it starts to be gamed, then we will fix it.

There is no question that The Reputation score is being gamed. For me there is No question that we need to urgently fix it. And whoever it concerns better do so!

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I have to say you make slot of sense. I understand that steemit encourages people to want to be like “rich” people by giving them more power on the platform, but that is truly not the best way forward for a community and social platform like this.

If that power is genuinely earned and deserved, we should have no problem, but when it is a result of some people gaming the system, then it becomes bad. Thanks for your thoughts, @leggy23

Totally on the point. Nevertheless @mirrors, much of this power is mostly not earned and deserved, i mean, we're talking about the famous whales around here and they know themselves very well who they are. I would mention all of them here but i'm way too afraid i'd get flagged and rendered to zero. Of them all i've read about Jerry Banfield's scams so for sure his reputation is not a well earned one. I wish we the minnows have some power as well, but as you see i only write poetry and it barely gets noticed anyway so, i can not even dream of having the power to change something. Thank you though.

You will get noticed, @oculussensori. I mean, it is not like i am saying it is easy, but as in everything, hard work and persistence are key. The game here is pretty much unbalanced in several ways, i agree. And we have 'faulty' technical controls such as Reputation as well as behavioral modulators, but we have to work within their 'unfair' rules and hope they will in due time be fixed.

Thanks for your thoughts. Much appreciated.

Thank you @mirrors, i appreciate your words. Yes indeed i will continue with what i like to do even though it gets appreciated or not. I feel so much relieved putting all this out....

And if there's anything i can do to help for the better, please let me know, and i will do my best. Greetings @mirrors .

I am glad. @oculussensori. Keep posting good content, engage, and stay in touch.

Reputation score?-- more like money score.

In a sense, yes...especially when you opt for the bid bots.

No, it's more like a rewards looter reputation!

Hahaah...in sense yes.

If money is the only thing which is the most essential part to earn a good reputation....then whats the need to consistently involve ourselves in creating good contents.

I just assume those with high reps are older whales and little more.

I definitely agree that a change is worthwhile to make it more meaningful. I'd also be curious on how reputation should affect sorting on the Trending and Hot pages. I don't know if it makes sense that Reputation should be as important in those rankings, especially if its meaningless.

No. actually Reputation score has nothing to do with being a whale. That depends, if i have it right, on your rewards share. So it is possible to have a reputation of say 25 and be considered a whale, just as it is in deed possible, and there are many examples, to have a reputation of 70 and not be a whale!

Regarding how it can affect sorting on the trending page and hot pages, i think the first step is to make sure that whatever we call a reputation should in the true sense of the word, mean the same. That for me is a matter of technicalities. And if we can successfully manage to do that, the rest are only organizational, and we can sort and use it the way we see fit.

Otherwise as it stands, it certainly wouldn't make any sense in terms of ranking, because it does not reflect the true value and esteem of the community.

While I am not sure I would consider this the highest priority, I totally agree the Rep score is broken and basically meaningless.

I consider it a measure of how much one has earned, without being flagged by those with a larger rep! It has nothing to do with the way the community views you.

I think in terms of marketing and the image that steem wants to present to the world, it's pretty important. Anyone with a couple of brain cells joins this site and within minutes raise their eyebrows and the words ponzi & scheme come into play. This isn't helped when they realise that anybody with more money can completely control the system and get higher reputation despite how criminal or bogus they may be.

I think STINC have focused so much on the back end that they've basically just shrugged off their appearance to the global stage - much to the detriment of us all perhaps. If this is a feature that can easily be changed, why not just get a guy to change it in a single afternoon and make their image improve vastly?

I'm fine with it being changed!! Really fine with it.

Decentralized means that we don't just sit and wait for SteemIt, Inc.

Maybe someone should code it up and drop it on Github, that is kind of the point of OpenSource.

Let's get it done!

That would be great. That is something tech savvy's (i am not) should consider coding. If the problem is a concept, a few of us can sit down and state it. I am more than willing to be part of that.

I think in terms of marketing and the image that steem wants to present to the world, it's pretty important

That about says it all, @mobbs. You cannot imagine what impressions run in someones head to know that the highest REP account is also the account with the most controversy! it doesn't add up, not unless our idea of a 'reputation' is something else!

Good points. You just captured my mind buddy.

@wang died for our sins. R.I.P. @wang. Never forgotten.

He did ? How tho ?
Sorry!

I see the account is largely inactive....since from 2 years ago!

Even the whale account you mentioned up. It seems inactive too

which one? @wang is inactive yes, but @berniesanders is very much active.

The rancho...... account

That Rancho account does not blog, all it does is upvote one other account.

Oh okay. Cool

First point - Voting trails. I might get 200 upvotes without more than 30 actually manually upvoting me.

Secondd point - Great idea. Let reputation decline if your presence is not consistently appreciated, but if we can't do number of votes, that still allows haejin to get to 100 despite being one of the most disliked users on the platform. Tricky.

The bidbot issue is a really tricky one...but at any rate, i would rather we limit their influence to purely financial.

On the second point, i couldn't agree more. On the @haejin conundrum, part of the tweak would be to limit the extent by which a single account can lift your REP. The higher the reward share for example, the higher the extent by which any given account can influence the reputation score (but still to a limited extent). @haejin would need to invest in several alt accounts which would be practically impossible.

Otherwise the way its is @ranchorelaxo will lift his reputation to high heaven,,,and there is nothing we can do. What is saddening is that more than affect his/her rewards, given everyone else is below his/her reputation, our hands are basically tied and cannot impact on his reputation, which for me, more than reduced rewards, would have been the 'loudest' and most 'visible proof of community 'effect' against his behaviour.

@haejin seems aware of that, and understands the moral blow would be if his reputation was in deed lowered.....which is perhaps why despite the downvoting, he relentlessly continues and refuses to bark down...well aware the farther his reputation, the harder it is that it will ever be affected. It seems to me that he is as much interested in lifting his reputation as in the rewards.

Otherwise, the idea of a time based index, partly in the sense as you out it, that the REP declines if one's presence and 'community approvals' are not consistent, is part of the wider solution to resolving the REP issue.

Imagine if Haejin turned out to be a convicted pedophile - he will forever represent steem as the most reputable user! Food for thought...

Maybe i am wrong, but it seems to me the fixes are quite straight forward. If they removed the 'views counter' for example, i don't see why they can't either fix the REP - my preference-or get it off altogether, instead of keeping it at its current platform demeaning status.

I’m not really enjoying you being gone so long. Getting close to a month. I miss your curating, here’s to hoping all is well.

Hmm this is quite interesting. I am very new on Steemit and I had no idea about this yet, but what you are proposing makes a lot of sense to me.

These are also my first experiences with bots of this type and I must say it is quite a remarkable but creepy at the same time. Bots influencing our perceived reputations as humans within a human community? Just doesn't feel right. Black Mirror and Big Brother remembrance...

Bots should be left capable of influencing maybe rewards, but not the reputation. As in normal community life, reputation cannot be bought. Once it is possible to do so, it loses meaning.

I am of the opinion that The Reputation score should be done away with until a better solution/fix is implemented.

Thanks for your thoughts, @diego-ecoswell

Thank you! You have made me aware of my naivety, seriously!.... I definately need to do more research on the steemit platform.

A person’s reputation is the estimate in which he or she is held by the public in the place where he or she is known. It encapsulates that public’s collective opinion of him or her, established over time.

I thought that was the way it worked here!... Obviously I was wrong. 😕

That is how it should work. But it is unfortunately not how it is working. Which is why i am of the opinion that it should either be fixed to reflect one such ideal, or got ride of all together. Thanks

I think the rep system needs to be trashed. It is nothing but an annoyance to me. I follow @berniesanders and every time he posts something I have to click it and then select view. I subscribe to him. I want to view his posts. I don't care what other whales think of him. Get off my lawn Steemit.

Trashing may be way too far. The REP system does come with some ideal advantages, i would rather we fix it to reflect its ideal and purpose, rather than watch it being abused in such a manner as demeans the platform.

I understand what you mean and I guess I agree with you. However, if you follow someone, then their low rep should not hide their posts from you.