Rethinking Reputation on Hive
I won’t be pointing fingers today, no need to. This pseudo exploration of mine is, among other things, an attempt to organize some thoughts on the matter. I seem to believe that we’ve reached an unspoken consensus of sorts, and I’m curious to get some feedback on this issue.
In the days of the legacy chain, there was a lot of weight to our reputation score. It was somewhat implied that someone with a high number was valued by the community—as we know, this is hardly the case at the moment, and the spell may have been completely broken in the Haejin wars (at least for me).
Calling the reputation number useless would not be accurate, though, since it does give us some information regarding participation at least—hardly anything more than that.
Those of us who’ve been around long enough might remember @steem-ua, an attempt to come up with the "real" value of a user and assign it a supportive economic lifeline of a kind. However, that project was short-lived—its death marking an important step in the growth of our community.
I should say, in case there’s any confusion here, my critique of the current system, the almost useless reputation number—since it doesn’t give us insight into the value of said user—is not me calling for equal outcomes. It’s an invitation to think about how we could come up with a better way to display value in our ecosystem.
There are people here with high reputation who’ve been toiling away at their blogs for almost eight years that give almost nothing back to the community. They have most of their Hive-Power delegated and focus only on getting their daily ration, daily treat if you will—autovoting makes this a sad reality.
A new user might find one of these high-reputation individuals and get confused about the whole thing. Here’s a guy or gal, for that matter, who is giving a new user the precise wrong idea of "how to make it" here.
The lie:
Just write an article about something. Maybe about how coconut oil is good for the skin—watch the upvotes roll in.
The truth:
The content is irrelevant, as long as you’ve reached an upvote-for-upvote agreement with others.
The problem:
Not only is the lie a sure recipe for failure, but even to a new user, the truth, if he/she was to be informed of it, would do absolutely nothing to help them thrive in this community.
A cabal of upvotes-for-upvotes filled with dust accounts does absolutely nothing, except add bloat.
Reworking Reputation
I’m brainstorming something at the moment, and I hope others would pitch in with some ideas. In no particular order, these are the things that should be considered for calculating the score.
Upvoting Habits
This one is a no-brainer. How good is the user at distributing his/her upvote? Is it concentrated to specific accounts? Does it have a lot of autovoting?
Initiatives
Is the user participating in an initiative at all? Is he/she a curator? A radio host? An onboarding wizard? A tutorial maker? A developer?
Stake and Delegation Habits
Is the user delegating all his/her stake to maximize ROI only? How much Hive-Power is the user holding, compared to the amount earned?
Engagement
Is the user replying to comments? Commenting on other people’s posts? Rewarding comments?
Conclusion
My intention with this post is to get the conversation started. The only conclusion I have, at least at the moment, is that the reputation number next to my handle means nothing. I think we can do better, and maybe we should.
But I’m interested in getting some opinions on this subject.
I agree that the rep score doesn’t have a lot of value.
But I also think the things you nsme as an alternative are difficult to measure objectively.
You can measure the number of replies, but not the quality of them.
Initiatives are also hard to measure. And can you compare them?
Unfortunately I cannot come up with better ideas myself, but I'll think about it a bit more.
Maybe this could be brought up as a topic in one of tge podcasts.
Maybe your initiative could keep a tab of users that leave great comments. A score card of a kind.
But listen, I agree. This is not easy to think about about, hence why I'm putting it out there.
Our weekly report has the top 20 most upvoted Hivers. We upvote a lot of commemts, but there are also a lot we don't upvote.
All the different things together would make someone a great contributor to the chain.
I've slept a night over it and came up with and idea.
Maybe you could do something with a badge or maybe even multiple badges for people that contribute to the growth of Hive.
You could set up a diverse team that decides who should receive a badge.
You could measure all the things you mention in your post and 'the team' can nominate people who they think receives a badge.
And when a user stops being active or 'misbehaves', you could just remove the badge.
In PeakD the badges are shown next to your profile. I other interfaces they aren't (yet).
I do like the idea of having badges for this, for sure. Maybe talking with @arcange is a good start.
I see @arcange is a guest in the HIVE THRIVE podcast next week. Maybe a nice topic to discuss there too.
Oh yes, fo sho!
I completely agree with you. I believe that if a dynamic reputation were created based on engaging and contribution, this would make the network more effective.
Did you find reputation confusing at first?
Yes, but this current repetition cannot be removed. The effort of someone who has been posting for years cannot be wasted.
not arguing for getting rid of the current rep number. But it should probably mean something else.
If @blocktrades could Zack Morris time out the world, he would finally have the freedom to work on the new reputation system he teased us with 5 years ago. :)
This was the first evidence I could find, but I am sure he mentioned it earlier than this on chain or during an interview. Check out the bottom of this post.
https://hive.blog/hive-139531/@blocktrades/roadmap-for-hive-related-work-by-blocktrades-in-the-next-6-months
Well good to know that he's been thinking about this. Another sign we need to make some noise.
We are still working on it, but for a long time it was all in the theoretical design realm. More recently we started writing some actual code for it, but its not yet to a working prototype.
thanks for replying Blocks!
Yeah, reputation is bullcrap
People used to buy themselves a high rep with bots. It was horrible back then, its just bs now.
Reputation is indeed an useless metrics, we know that from the era of bidbots and not only. I remember steem-ua very well, and was thinking how it died.
Good question MenO, although I don't know how it can be fixed.
Hence why we are brainstorming. If you want, try to freewrite some ideas down. Be messy, who cares. See if something sticks, and make a post about it once it starts to take shape.
The biggest problem is how to attribute reputation to existing users as you can't start from zero. Or you can't attribute the same score to new users or users who've been here for 8 years. I don't know how you'd solve that.
what if we have a rep based on karma. Starts out neutral(yellow), turns red (shades of) or green to show if the user is behaving good. This, next to the number that says how long they've been here(current rep) kinda sorta.
Reputation on Hive really does feel kinda meaningless. It’s like having a high score in a game nobody plays anymore. A system that actually rewards real engagement and contribution would be something worth caring about.
BINGO
Rep should definitely not be based only on money acquired. If I were a millionaire, I'd put an HP in one account and Upvote another account to raise the rep but that wouldn't mean I earned it from working hard on the platform.
Precisely the issue. It would be like buying Diplomas.
hey.. I want to be a Doctor. How much for the Phd again?
Reputation is somewhat complicated. I usually go by how long someone has been here on Hive more than their Rep score.
I have been here 7 years with a rep score of just over 70. This is because I wasn’t posting a whole lot initially.
But I know grifters on here who have been here slightly longer who have a rep score of 84.
I won’t mention names but they aren’t good people.
You are sadly very correct.
The way you've brainstormed is very good. From engagement to how the Upvotes are being shared. All of this will certainly help if this is what is the metric for measuring. That way some new comers could actually have a way higher score than some big time people
I would love to see that!!!
the idea I was playing with recently was having two reputation scores. Long term and Recent.
Our current rep system would be the Long Term one except that the dial would only be moved up or down based on the Recent rep score. Recent rep would use all of the factors that you just mentioned to create a far more fluctuating score, that goes down significantly if you aren't using the platform, or if your extraction is high compared to your input, or if you're getting pasted with downvotes or something (obviously it would calculate everything to make the score fairly dynamic). If its low, it will start to eat away at your Long Term reputation, but if its kept high it will build you a ladder to the stars!
There could maybe be some things (like not posting for a while) that wouldn't necessarily push your Recent rep in to the negative, but would trend towards neutral so that your Long Term rep stays pretty much where it is... not sure. What do you think? Any mileage in this idea or is it replete with devastating butterfly effects that would bring Hive to its knees if implemented?
BASIL... I love your insane brain!
Love these ideas. I'm going to chew on this bubble gum for a bit. This is good stuff.
You have no clue how happy it makes me to see you writing a comment on my blog.
Btw, I'm on discord again, say hi sometime.
Your comment is upvoted by @topcomment
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@azircon - what do you think of Basil's idea?
KE metric doesn't have post frequency in it, and I am not interested in it. From experience I can tell with just a simple glance at an account if that account is abusive or not. I personally don't need a metric to determine that. KE is designed to help others. It is doing a great job on that. People picked it up over time, and I didn't push it.
I'm confident you can. I guess my idea here is one of social eng. - new people coming in, an easily discern what behavior is better. Make it a game, if you will, to have a good score in this mini game.
I agree with KE being a great metric- lot better than the current rep number for sure. Maybe that should be the first change, get rid of the number next to our handles and write in the KE. But I think we can do more.
maybe its the kind of idea that would be better tested on a breakaway community first to look for issues with it. Azir might be right that its not really necessary, but im sure he must agree that the current rep system is pretty pants. Replacing it with KE would be kind of funny.... there'd be some BIG shift ups in terms of who we see as our most prominent community leaders Im sure!
Exciting to see you buzzing about the hive Meno :) catch you on discord sometime Im sure
I think rep matters to some extent, but you need other measures to know if someone is a good community member. Some get a lot of votes, but hardly comment or reply. I get plenty of votes, but not many of those $10+ ones that everyone wants. I will reply to most good comments I get if there is something to be said.
I think the current rep was just something that was easy to implement and it can be manipulated. Anything else will only get criticised too. You have to check someone out really.
My whole point is to attempt to create a type of mini game, if you will, for the newbies to adopt. meaning, they can try to get their scores up, thus acting the way that its best for this platform, and gaining our support along the way.
Set the culture.
The data is all out there and anyone can process it into a score. We have the various Hive Buzz badges that make it into a game.
It needs to be easier to see, quick, like the number next to our avatar. I hope when we sit down with @arcane in a week (i think) we can bring this up and see if "the game" could use an update.
I've written a little bit about Reputation. You can find those posts here: https://peakd.com/@moeknows?filter=reputation
Those posts lay out the technical facts of the current rep score and give my thoughts on it and possible solutions. My latest brainstorming on the subject was summed up in a snap or two. That was basically using a similar voting mechanism as witness votes. It's simple, but I think it would be an easy and effective solution.
we need to talk about this some more. find me on discord bro.
=((LOG10(H4132)-9)*9)+25
awesome sauce...