Hello fellow Steemians. I am here to give my honest opinion on the Steemit Reputation system. If you don't know what the system is, read up about it here:

https://steemit.com/steemit/@dantheman/brief-update-on-reputation-score

Great! Now you know what the Reputation System is, and I am going to give my most honest thoughts on this feature.

The Scale

As of right now, the reputation scale is from 10 to -8. And the majority of the STEEMIT users are at 1 (make sense). However, this scale quite doesn't fit for me. It should be on a scale of 1 - 10. Yes, I know the negatives are for spammers and bots. Then, what about the people who do comment and vote as a human. It makes them feel worthless, non-existent even. (I know somebody with a -6 and is not a bot). Sure, this applies on the 1 - 10 scale as well. But, I feel like the positive integers don't impact the mind as much as the negative integers do. So in all honesty, I think the scale can be tweaked so that it isn't so hard on the person with a negative! (I do account in the bots and spammers, so leave them be maybe) For example, the 1 - 4 can replace the -1 to -8 and the 6 - 10 can replace the 2 -  10. The 5 is the middle ground, so it replaces the 1. Still has the same effect (to prevent abusive behavior, and that is what I like about the reputation system) If this, doesn't work out, maybe it should be based on the percentage. (100% rep. = 10, and so on.)

Wang doesn't like the fact that he got -8 from his bot-work. Oh well, after all, the reputation system is still brand new.

Image from : https://steemit.com/steemit/@dantheman/brief-update-on-reputation-score

Power System

Reputation scores work like earthquake richter scales, they operate  on log base 10.  In other words a reputation level 8 is 10 times  stronger than reputation level 7.    Likewise, -8 is 10 times more  negative than -7.

Those with weaker reputations are unable to harm the reputation of those with strong reputation.

This system makes sense to me. The lower rep. people cannot effect the higher rep. people. In addition, those with negative power (-6 and below) can post/blog, with the only exception being that it will be hidden. I believe that all posts and comments shouldn't be hidden, if they must be hidden, then have a section where you go to [new] -> [all] to see all posts, whether it be hidden or not. This goes for the comments as well. My last opinion is that if lots of people with lower rep. downvotes a comment or post, then that post/comment should become less visible. That's because if 100 (6) users downvote a (7) user, then it should definitely drag the post down. After all, (7) is only 10 times for powerful than a 6. So, if there are 100 (6) of them, it should over power the 7. Other than that, everything else is fine.

General Thoughts

I believe that this reputation system has great potential the ways its going, and right now, it definitely needs a lot of fixing so that users can fairly be judged by the reputation algorithm (I feel like many users(not that many) were unfairly punished).  Since STEEMIT is still in beta, I think the reputation system is best used when STEEMIT is no longer in beta. 

Additional Thoughts

Just a thought, maybe the reputation system could be reworked into a 'user rating' system. Only being judged by a vote seems to odd, there needs to be more than 1 way to earn rep. than just voting. I think that the system could be more subtler, it just isn't needed that much right now. Only when maybe STEEMIT has more users. And, that, is my opinion on the Reputation System. And remember to be careful what you do on STEEMIT because...

Keep STEEMING! - Krystox