ksnake wrote:


My point was just this: on eBay I know (even if I have never used it) there is a system for getting users' feedback after transactions. Example: A sells something to B; after the trade is done (A received the money and B the goods), both A & B give a rating to each other; in this way, if one of them was a "crook", other eBay users will know that before trading with that person. However, as you pointed out, this system may be subject to multiple abuses, despite the site administrators' intervention.
The fact is that the proposed popularity system works the same way, so it has the same pros and against...
It may be used as well for "mobbing" against a particular user, considering that a lot of players wouldn't really bother so much about saying if someone is nice or not. Example: there is a group of players (friends, relatives etc...) who dislikes a "good old buddy"; they start rating him very low (along with asking other friends to join the site in order to do the same - or eventually doing that themselves with fake accounts!); the "good old buddy" would find her/himself rated low just because of this!
So, we cannot think that there are systems that can be exploited and others which can not, but just decide to assume whether the persons who will use it will be mainly honest or dishonest...