Reputation is based on votes right?
The more votes you get the higher your reputation.
That sounds fine to link your voting power to your reputation to prevent sybil attacks. but there is one small problem with that.
Our first porn star on Steemit got a reputation of 60 in about two days. It took me three months to get that.
One point I'd like to make (and i am possibly quite wrong here).. Steemit is decentralized - it's on decentralized blockchain technology. No-one said that the power has to be equally shared among the users, or that a larger section of users should have more power or that the whales should have less power.
In fact the way this works on Steemit at the moment mimics real life. It's not a fantasy land where everyone is equal and we all get the rewards we thing we deserve.
By all means point out the flaws in the system, suggest ways it can be improved. that's helpful. But let's focus on real issues and not that we think we are missing out because someone has more power, or gets more votes.
if money is your only motivator, then nothing here is going to keep you interested. if your interest is participation in something new, innovative, special that has the potential to earn you some bucks for your hard work down the track, then you are more likely to stay, meet cool people and enjoy yourself.
I know which strategy I'm pursuing.
Note: this it not an attack on you or your views . I'm just over people complaining about Steemit not fitting their own vision of what it should be, instead if working with what we have to make it better.
That's one big issue with @richardcrill 's suggestion.
However, a much, much, much bigger issue, from the platform functionality and power distribution standpoint, is what @timcliff brought up, higher up in the comments section to this post - reputation is easily gamed by high SP accounts.
It costs about $10 to make an account and something like 5 to 10 votes from a "mega whale" (1 million SP +) account to get an account from the initial 25 to 60+ reputation. For only $100 and "spending" 50, or so, votes, a mega whale account owner suddenly gains 10 more accounts of high voting influence, thanks to the reputation loophole that @richardcrill is suggesting.
Before we know it, mega whales with 1 million SP will have 5 million SP influence, due to all the cheap voting power that they can get through churning out these cheap accounts to take advantage of the aforementioned loophole.
I mean, they can have 1,000 accounts for just $10,000.00. What's that to a person that has over $500,000.00 in SP? I'll tell you what, pittance. It's an easy call.
Very good point. Thank you for explaining that so clearly. This is exactly why I asked for feedback from the community. Thank you. It's obvious to me now that it wouldn't be a good idea without making changes to the way that reputation works. I'll have to keep thinking.
Good point. I'm not gonna spam my previously mentioned idea here, but I'd be interested in your take on it.