@charlieshrem wrote an interesting post last week on social capital. Then @dragosroua wrote a great follow-up post, and brought up an important point about the difference between voting on content versus voting on a person. The current reputation system that we have is largely driven by the quality of content that users produce. We don't have a great measurement for the quality of people. I propose we develop an "Esteem Score" as a measure of a person's actual reputation/character.

Note - This is only a proposal. There is no buy-in from anyone yet, so it is not something to expect as a new feature anytime soon. If there is enough support for the idea though, I will propose it to the Steemit dev team as an addition to the community 'wish list', so that maybe it can be added in the future!

Esteem Score Proposal:

High Level Concept:

• Every user would have an Esteem Score, which represents how they are viewed by the members of the community.
• The user's Esteem Score would be displayed in their profile and next to the author's name, similar to the reputation score.
• There would be an "Esteem Voting" interface in each user's profile, for other users to cast their Esteem votes for that user.
• Members with high amounts of SP should have higher influence over user's scores, but not as significant as the current voting algorithm weight.
• Achieving a very high or very low Esteem score would require lots of upvotes/downvotes from a very large percentage of the overall community.
• The gamification element is for users to try and earn as many Esteem upvotes from members of the community as they can, through their actions and interactions with other members of the community - similar to how witnesses earn witness upvotes.

Voting:

• Each user gets one vote per other member of the community.
• The vote can be neutral, positive, or negative.
• Votes can be changed at any time. A new vote will replace any old one for the user.
• The vote can include a comment, explaining why the rating was given. (Similar to eBay feedback)
• All users will start with a default 'neutral' vote from all other users.

Score Range:

• Every user would start out with an Esteem Score of 0.
• The maximum possible score would be 100.
  This would only be achieved with an upvote from every single active user in the community.
• The minimum possible score would be -100
  This would only be achieved with an downvote from every single active user in the community.

Vote Weight:

• A user with less than 1 MV of Steem Power would have zero weight. They can still cast votes and leave comments, but they will not affect the users' scores.
• A user with at least 1 MV of Steem Power would have a weight of 1.
• A user with at least 10 MV of Steem Power would have a weight of 2.
• A user with at least 50 MV of Steem Power would have a weight of 3.
• A user with at least 100 MV of Steem Power would have a weight of 4.
• A user with at least 1000 MV of Steem Power would have a weight of 5.

Eligibility:

• In order to cast Esteem votes, users must first have an Esteem score of at least 1.
• Since all users will start with a score of 0, a reputation score of 50 or higher will also qualify for casting Esteem votes during the first month after the system is initially implemented.

Inactive Users:

• Any users who have not cast any new Esteem votes within the past 3 months will be considered 'inactive'.
• Inactive users' comments will still show up, but their votes will not be counted as part of the score calculations.
• The purpose of this is to prevent old users from having an unfair advantage over new users, since new users would not be able to earn upvotes from the people that are no longer active.
• It also makes it so that it is at least theoretically possible for users to achieve a perfect Esteem Score by receiving upvotes from every member of the active community.

Score Calculation:

• Add up all votes - multiplied by their weight.
• (Upvotes are positive. Downvotes are negative.)
• Divide the amount by the maximum possible total of weighted votes.
• Multiply by 100.

Simple Example 1:

• Suppose there are only 10 total users in the system.
• 8 of them have 1 MV of SP. 2 of them have 10 MV of SP.
• User 'A' gets upvotes from 3 users that have 1 MV of SP, and an upvote from a user that has 10 MV.
• The sum of their weighted votes is: 1 + 1 + 1 + 2 = 5.
• The maximum possible total of weighted votes is (8 * 1) + (2 * 2) = 12.
• This user's Esteem Score would be (5 / 12) * 100 = 41.67.

Simple Example 2:

• Suppose there are only 10 total users in the system.
• 8 of them have 1 MV of SP. 2 of them have 10 MV of SP.
• User 'B' gets a downvote from a user with 10 MV of SP, and upvotes from 6 users that have 1 MV of SP.
• The sum of their weighted votes is: -2 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 = 4.
• The maximum possible total of weighted votes is (8 * 1) + (2 * 2) = 12.
• This user's Esteem Score would be (4 / 12) * 100 = 33.33.

Simple Example 3:

• Suppose there are only 10 total users in the system.
• 8 of them have 1 MV of SP. 2 of them have 10 MV of SP, but one of the 10 MV users has not logged in within the last 3 months.
• User 'C' gets upvotes from 5 users that have 1 MV of SP, and upvotes from both users that have 10 MV of SP.
• The sum of their weighted votes is: 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 2 = 7.
• The maximum possible total of weighted votes is (8 * 1) + (2) = 10.
• This user's Esteem Score would be (7 / 10) * 100 = 70.00.

What does everyone think?

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Remember to vote for witnesses:
https://steemit.com/~witnesses