Thank you for your response and again I appreciate your thoughts on this. The more I think about it, the more a distributed, two-level flagging system makes sense. Even though it adds a layer of complexity, I think you could get around it by adding a reward to the "confirmation" level of flagging. And since the confirmation layer is randomized, it would be very difficult to game the system.
Here's a theoretical walkthrough:
- I flag someone and specify the offense (maybe using different flags as you mentioned). In this case, let's say it's plagiarism.
- My action of flagging for plagiarism is then randomly assigned to a handful of people with a higher reputation score than myself.
- Motivated by some reward (whether financial or reputational), the higher-reputation individuals see if the plagiarism flag is deserved.
- Final judgment is rendered by quorum majority--multiple people have to confirm if the flag has merit (this eliminates bias or lazy judgements)
- Perhaps as an added incentive for the quorum to make qualitative and just judgements: if a judge/confirmer is routinely out of the majority with their judgement, it could affect their reputation score--or simply disqualify them from participating in confirmations in the future--and thus forfeiting the opportunity for reward.
Your proposal could be a very interesting one to further look into. For sure, however is the 2nd, 3rd, 4rd decision maker, shall follow some rules on which we agree within the community and these individuals shall be 100% transparent in what they do and reviewed by the community from time to time.
That's a great point and something to consider. Also, I agree that 100% transparency is definitely a good thing :)