Steemit has introduced a new Reputation Score, what is it and how can you boost up your Score

Today i was made aware of the new Reputation Score of Steemit. Behind your username, you will see a number from -8 to 10 (-8 would be really bad, while 10 would be the best score)

So lets have a look at the numbers how the Score is distributed along all users:

So first of all, this chart reveals something very interesting, the user numbers of Steemit :   44523    

How does the Score Calculation work:

Technical Explanation for geeks and IQ170+ : https://github.com/steemit/steem/blob/develop/libraries/plugins/follow/follow_plugin.cpp

Explanation for normal humans:

So this updates totally changes the game. Bots will have a hard time to earn reputation (See @wang with -8 but a lot SP) , so the good thing is they wont be able to hurt your reputation with a down-vote (The will still affect your payout with a down-vote)

In the long-term, this change will make sure, that good content creators will be rewarded, and the most criticized thing on Steemit, that Whales have too much power will be not so relevant anymore. Check the reputations of the whales on www.steemwhales.com, you can see that some of the whales only have 5-7 scores. 

So until now everybody was just chasing the whales, but now everyone with a score higher than 4 will add something to your Reputation Score. So this will play nicely with the soon to be activated Followers Function. Build up your followers network, and you will be rewarded with higher Reputation scores (i wrote about the Follow Function here)

I am really excited about this new function, i have been giving constant feedback to other posters, voting them up if i liked the content. My vote is currently worth around 43Cent per vote, but seeing some posts only generating 2-3$ even having 120+ votes was depressing sometimes. Now i will vote even more carefully, as i know that i am in the 3rd category of top Reputation holders and i have to make sure, every of my votes counts.  

What the Reputation score might do in the future (These are just my thoughts)

• Shuffle posts/content from relevant posters to other users
• Generate automatic reading lists
• Eventually High reputation users will get Mod functions for discussions
• Comments of high reputation holders will be bumped up to first place (now its about the $ amount)
• Making Steemit independent from the SP only system, SP and Rep. Score influencing votes etc.

So how can we improve our reputation score (the legit way - no cheating)

1.) Post quality, forget quantity, its all about quality now!

2.) Engage in Discussion (remember that some members are earning more rewards and reputations scores through their comments)

3.) Up-vote Carefully (Try to not vote on crap, just vote up relevant content and posters)

4.) Build up your followers and following list

So hurry, start building your own followers list, engage in discussions and of course please post Quality Content on Steemit !

P.S. @Dan, it would be great if you could leave a comment, what the Reputation score will change from, am i right with my assumption, that this is your solution to the Whale problem, so many users are complaining about?