Reputation = 71, but does it mean much?

Almost exactly a year ago I reached reputation 70 on Steemit. That was a big deal as not many people were in the 70s. It seemed to get me a little respect. Back then you could see everyone ranked by rep, value, followers etc on Steem Whales, but that site hasn't been updated in ages. Is there anywhere else with similar charts?

So today I saw my rep tick over to 71. I've been expecting it for a while as you can see a more exact value on SteemNow or on Steemit itself if you have the Hive account@steem-plus extension (which I consider essential). My rep goes up a few thousandths of a point each week and it will get slower as it's an exponential scale.

I've been wondering how much value this reputation has these days. I see accounts like this that are higher than mine on a lot less activity. The reason is simple; he bought it. If you can buy reputation then what value does it really have? He just wants to be on trending all the time, but I expect he profits from that.

There's also this guy of course. His reputation is 99% through getting votes from his tame whale account. Apparently it can't be reduced as that can only happen if someone with a higher rep flags him.

I think the reputation calculation system was flawed from the start. It could have been made so that multiple flags from a given user had diminishing effect. A good reputation should be built on the support of many people. Paid votes should really not count at all. I don't know if this can be changed. I really don't mind my reputation going down again as long as everyones' was adjusted in the same way, if that is even possible.

Recently a new ranking system appeared from Hive account@steem-ua. You can see your rank and score on their site. Not sure why you have to log in with Steemconnect to get your score, but here's mine. The presentation is not great at the moment. I guess that's not bad. I'd need a score of 6.776 to get in the top 100. Note that neither of those featured above are in that chart. You can delegate to them to get votes based on your score. I may consider doing that.

I have been flagged along the way, including by Mr. H, but I think they were all in retaliation for my curation rather than my content. I'm currently being flagged by Hive account@mat1973 on all my posts because I and others flagged his junk posts as part of @SteemFlagRewards. He's powering down, so his effect will diminish.

I'm also very close to 5000 followers, but that's another meaningless number. Most of them are inactive or were just hoping I'd return the favour. Just this week I gained about 15 that were all pushing some re-steem service.

I may sound a little down, but then it's a bittersweet milestone. In general I am still positive about the future of Steem and Steemit. It is still evolving and the potential to abuse it may diminish over time as we gain users and more of them have the power to really curate (both up and down). Not everyone here is out purely for personal profit and lots of good work is being done. The Steem price is low due to general crypto panic and the site ranking is not great, but I'm still having lots of fun and looking forward to Steemfest.

Steem on and on and on!

I'm Steve, the geeky guitarist.

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