A few days ago, @dantheman posted his musing about the Reputation system here on Steemit and how it might be monetized (though he was clear that this was all theoretical). The post got me thinking about the Reputation system here and how it might be best altered/adapted to reward people with high-level Reputation Scores.

A High Reputation is Not a Reward

"But aren't you being rewarded already with a high Reputation Score?" Well, yes and no. That number in the little circle next to your Steemit username is merely a quantified representation of something that's highly subjective: your perceived value as a content creator.

Your Reputation Score is a number, generated by an algorithm that uses math too complicated for me to understand easily, that roughly shows you how popular your content has been. The higher that number, the more upvotes you've gotten consistently and over time. As such it's not actually a reward in and of itself - the SBD and STEEM POWER you've earned off that content is your reward. It's also a perceived value, because there's no objectivity on Steemit; the community as a whole determines if your content is meritorious enough to earn an upvote.

Why We Need the Reputation Score

So if the Reputation Score is just an attempt to quantify the subjective opinion of the community at large, why do we need it at all? Can't we just look at a user's overall STEEM POWER to see how much influence they've gathered from their content?

The answer, as I learned in law school, is "it depends." If someone has never Powered Down, and they haven't invested outside funds into their STEEM POWER, then the amount of SP they have is a relative indicator of the rewards they've generated from their content - but only when you compare it to another user that satisfies the same criteria. The ability to Power Up and Down makes SP an unreliable indicator of reputation, as it's constantly changing.

This is why the Reputation Score is a better indicator. Someone who buys into Steemit with a huge SP investment might become an overnight whale, but that doesn't speak to their ability to produce quality content. Likewise, a prolific content creator may feel the need to Power Down to transfer their hard-earned STEEM into Bitcoin or fiat currency to pay the bills or even just go on a hard-earned vacation, reducing their SP below what it would have been otherwise if they hadn't Powered Down. Reputation, on the other hand, only reflects upvotes and downvotes/flags, making it a more accurate way to measure something that's already so subjective.

So if It's Not a Reward, Should it Be?

So we've established two things so far:

1. A high Reputation Score is not, in and of itself, a reward
2. Reputation Scores are the best way to measure a user's perceived value to the community

This means that the Reputation Score provides a valuable service to others, as it allows them to tell, at a glance, your relative worth as a content creator to the community at large. This inevitably leads to more readership, which leads to the potential for more upvotes, more monetary rewards, and a Reputation Score that continues to climb.

Again, your Reputation Score on Steemit does not directly reward you. Yes, it's an indicator of your historic performance, and it's likely to indicate the probability of your success going forward, but you don't get anything directly from it.

But what if we did? What if, for example, someone who hits a certain Reputation level gets some perks as a reward for being a valued member of the community?

How to Reward High-Reputation Users

Providing rewards to high-Reputation users doesn't have to be unbalancing. There's more to Steemit than just SBD and STEEM, after all. One example of how high-Rep users could be rewarded is by providing them more voting power. While you can control your voting power now through a combination of the slider and just how often you vote in a 24-hour period, providing more tools for those with high Reputations to vote more often without degrading their voting power as much may be one way to reward them.

More Resilient Voting Power

This may seem counter-intuitive, as the goal is to ensure that users don't sit at 100% voting power, but the justification behind providing more voting power to high-Reputation users is to encourage them to vote more often. People who have earned a reputation for providing good content to the community are likely to know good content when they see it in others, which means that they have the potential to contribute to the community in more ways than simply generating content. Content curation is the other side of the coin in the Steemit equation, and giving high-Rep users an opportunity to curate more effectively has the potential to increase the perceived quality of the platform as a whole.

More Monetary Rewards

Another potential reward for having a high Reputation Score is to increase monetary rewards by a bonus percentage. This is problematic and has the potential for abuse of course - if the bonus percentage is set too high, then users could end up being rewarded too richly for their efforts. To avoid this, there could be an upward cap on how high your bonus percentage can go; you can also limit the total monetary value of the bonus reward as well, which could act as a limiting factor as well.

More Visibility

A less direct approach may be to provide a "free" level of promotion for users with high Reputation Scores. Currently, the promotion system requires an investment of Steem Dollars; the more SBD you sink into the promotion system, the more visibility your post gets on the Promoted page. Providing high-Reputation users a discounted rate for promoting their posts - on a sliding scale, according to how much Reputation they actually have - is another way to reward them for consistently good content.

More Powerful Curation Rewards

One of the biggest things that drives me as a Steemit author is the growing balance of my STEEM POWER. I know that, once I hit significantly high thresholds, my upvotes will be worth substantially more. Providing higher curation rewards to the community at large is certainly one of my own goals, and there are plenty of Steemit users out there that certainly share that goal.

Providing a boost to a user's curation reward power without actually increasing their STEEM POWER permanently is one way to reward high-Reputation users as well. Awarding a certain level of "Virtual SP" would make a high-Rep user's upvote count for more. This would allow low-SP content curators with high Reputations to compete with people with Dolphins and Whales that might have bought into the system rather than bootstrpapping themselves.

This system would also be prone to abuse if not handled carefully. Again, capping the amount of Virtual SP to a certain amount, depending on a user's actual SP value, could be one way to curtail abuse. Other methods could also be employed, such as only being able to vote with Virtual SP once every 24 hours, and so on.

Conclusion

The Reputation Score system as it exists today provides value to the community. It acts as a general overview of how a particular author's content has performed in the past and how it may perform in the future, making it easier for readers to determine if that content is worth a read. It also benefits authors indirectly as a high Reputation may attract more readers in this manner, which has the potential to increase the curation rewards an author's content generates.

However, there is room for more direct benefit to authors who have worked hard to increase their Reputation Score. These benefits can take many different forms, including better curation reward powers, bonus payouts, and higher post visibility, to name a few. The question remains - are these benefits necessary, or do high-Reputation users already get enough benefit as it is?