Time for a 'Following' audit? - Some thoughts on User Authority

In light of recent discussions around User Authority, I decided to have a look at the list of accounts I follow. A very brief introduction to User Authority, some personal thoughts, and 'not another list offering'?!

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User Authority was discussed here yesterday, and his post explains what it is, and the potential benefits it could bring to Steem.

The first posts on the topic, as far as I am aware, are here and here and were written by @scipio. There are not for the fainthearted, but with enough patience and slow reading, I think most should be able to grasp the concept.

Basically, User Authority (UA) could be used to replace 'Reputation', which clearly doesn't define a users real reputation with regards to quality of content, service to the community, or just about anything else really!

I've taken this from @scipio's 2nd link above, as I think it explains how UA works very well:

... The more followers an account has, the higher its UA. Every additional follower improves the UA-score of the followed account. However, not all follows are weighed equally! If @stellabelle for example (who is followed by a lot of accounts) would follow my account @scipio, that one follow by @stellabelle greatly improves my own @scipio UA because @stellabelle's own UA is high. If my @scipio account is also followed by a new account, that one additional follow also improves the UA-score of the @scipio account, but not very much.

So each account is given a score, based on its followers, and their followers, and their followers, and so on. This is a proper number-crunching operation, do not try this with a pen and paper!

UA could also be extended to use other metrics, pretty much anything you can compute. I like the thought of this as new metrics could be 'easily' and 'quickly' introduced, perhaps following open discussion by the community as a whole. Perhaps a higher UA would have the most 'weight' in the argument? :)

In the comments of @cryptoctopus's post yesterday, newer accounts were concerned with UA, as they would clearly start with a low UA score. However, all accounts start here on Reputation 25, and so I don't see a problem with this at all. Potentially, a new user could create a really awesome piece of content and be rewarded little first time out. This may lead to a growth in Reputation to 30, but they could have earned a good start to their UA score. The example I can think of is that curation team members have spotted this account and followed it ready for future work. These team members themselves may not hold a lot of Steem Power (low vote, low Reputation increase), but may have plenty of Followers themselves.

Driving 'Reputation' via a UA score has a fair few interesting side effects, probably more than I can think of right now, but I'll focus on engagement, and connection to a community.

The requirement of accounts, under the UA scoring mechanism, to engage in the community seems fairly obvious to me. You need to be seen, and what you produce will need to be good/interesting. Networking will also be important, and together as a community, each persons UA will increase.

It also seems that binding one's account close to a community with larger accounts heading it up will be a good thing as far as UA score. Working closely with @utopian-io (10105 followers), or contributing top notch video content to @dtube (74160 followers - 2nd highest) and recieving a follow from these accounts is likely to boost an accounts UA score greatly. Well done (in advance to UA becoming a reality) if you are one of the lucky 34 accounts to be followed by @dtube!

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So what else could happen with UA in place? Tactical following/un-following? Maybe!

Better management of ones account with regards to who they are following?

I'm certainly going to look into the accounts I follow should UA become a reality. And well, I couldn't resist a look at my 'follows' from the database side. (The steemit.com user interface for viewing/managing 'follows' is pretty poor if I'm being honest - That would have to improve if UA arrived.)

I looked at the accounts I followed, ordered by the last time they produced content. Some of the accounts I follow have never produced content, but I follow them mainly, just in case they do. There are other accounts in my list who used to produce content and have stopped, a fair few of those haven't submitted a top level post or comment in 2018, and perhaps these accounts would be a fair place to start.

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Need a list? 🙈

I'm wondering if a personalized list of some of your most inactive followers might be of use? For some of you, following 5000+ accounts, a list of the 50 most inactive isn't going to help you out too much - but it's a start I guess!

I can include such things as 'last_post_date', 'last_vote' (to anyone), and perhaps even Steem Power would be useful too - An account with next to no SP who's not posted/commented this year would seem to suggest they were no longer with us.

Following such accounts could potentially lower your User Authority score (@scipio to confirm but I think I'm correct in saying this!)

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Personally, I think there is huge scope for User Authority, and someone else seems interested too.

_{You can find that comment here}

Soo yeah, a list anyone? (I'm dreading this already!)

Cheers

Asher