Our new Rails app: pplrep

For example, let's say I started a business and I need first customers, which I cannot get without the reputation. One cheat is to simply create 100 accounts on your website, each referring to each other and giving points to each other. Even if you manually check each account, which I think you wouldn't be able to do at a certain point, I can game the system and gain fake reputation.

An alternative would be a system based on connections. For instance, if my friend or a friend of my friend gave your account some points, then I can be more sure of the validity of your reputation. The more connections you have to me and the shorter the route, the more reputable you appear to me. On the other hand, if all your points come from your own fake accounts which have no connections to any of my friends, your reputation appears 0 to me, even though you have 100 points.

There's a limit on how often you can rep a single person (once every 24 hours), and if you are to spam different people with rep, your rep is likely to be deleted by the person's profile, which will take your score back down two points. Since a person's profile is public, they likely don't want their profile filled with spam rep or to like their reps are fake. We are hoping members will play their role in moderating in their own profiles.