What is Hive reputation and how does it work?

All you wanted to know about reputation

A lot of users found themselves confused about what reputation is, how it is computed, how it changes, and which effect it has on what, ...

I have compiled here all the information I found about reputation and tried to make it easier for everyone to understand how it works on Hive.

What is the reputation for?

The reputation has two roles:

1. It is an indicator that shows how “trusted or appreciated by the community” you are.
2. It is a tool that prevents users with a low reputation to harm other users.

How it works

Reputation points are calculated using the mathematical function Log base 10.
Here is a representation of this function. (note for the purists: I know the X-axis scale is not correct for reputation. I made it as is for simplicity)

As you can see, is it very easy to raise your reputation at the beginning, but the higher your reputation, the harder it is to increase it. In fact, each time you want to increase your reputation by 1 point, it is ten times harder!

The main effect is that a reputation of 60 is 10 times stronger than a reputation of 59.
It is the same for a negative reputation. A reputation of -8 is 10 times weaker than a reputation of -7.

People with a low reputation cannot harm the reputation of someone with a strong reputation.

This explains why creating a bot that systematically flags other posts is useless unless the bot has a high reputation, something that will be hard to achieve for a “flag bot”. In no time, the bot’s reputation will be ruined and it will become harmless.

There is no lower or upper limit to reputation.

About Reward Shares

Before continuing to see how reputation points are “computed”, you need to understand the concept of “Reward Shares“

When you vote for a post or comment, you tell the system to take some money (the reward) from the Global Reward Pool and give 50% of this reward to the author (the author reward) and to share the remaining 50% of the reward between the people that voted for the post (the curation reward).

The more votes for the post from people with high voting power, the higher both rewards will be.

But the curation reward is not distributed equally among all voters.
Depending on the timing of your vote, the voting power you have and how much you allocated to your vote (percentage gauge), you will get a tiny part of the pie or a bigger one.
The size of your part is called the reward share

Here is an example of the distribution of the reward share on a comment:

You see that despite all users casting a vote with full power (100%), they have different Reward Shares.

OK, now, let's go back to the reputation. All you have to do is to keep in mind this Reward Share value exists.

How reputation is “computed”

Each time someone votes for a post or a comment, the vote can have an impact on the author's reputation, depending on:

• the reputation of the voter
• the Reward Share of the voter

Let's have a look at the code that is executed each time you vote for something.
You can find it on Gitlab here

 const auto& cv_idx = db.get_index< comment_vote_index >().indices().get< by_comment_voter >();
 auto cv = cv_idx.find( boost::make_tuple( comment.id, db.get_account( op.voter ).id ) );

 const auto& rep_idx = db.get_index< reputation_index >().indices().get< by_account >();
 auto voter_rep = rep_idx.find( op.voter );
 auto author_rep = rep_idx.find( op.author );

 // Rules are a plugin, do not effect consensus, and are subject to change.
 // Rule #1: Must have non-negative reputation to effect another user's reputation
 if( voter_rep != rep_idx.end() && voter_rep->reputation < 0 ) return;

 if( author_rep == rep_idx.end() )
 {
 // Rule #2: If you are down voting another user, you must have more reputation than them to impact their reputation
 // User rep is 0, so requires voter having positive rep
 if( cv->rshares < 0 && !( voter_rep != rep_idx.end() && voter_rep->reputation > 0 )) return;

 db.create< reputation_object >( [&]( reputation_object& r )
 {
    r.account = op.author;
    r.reputation = ( cv->rshares >> 6 ); // Shift away precision from vests. It is noise
 });
 }
 else
 {
 // Rule #2: If you are down voting another user, you must have more reputation than them to impact their reputation
 if( cv->rshares < 0 && !( voter_rep != rep_idx.end() && voter_rep->reputation > author_rep->reputation ) ) return;

 db.modify( *author_rep, [&]( reputation_object& r )
 {
    r.reputation += ( cv->rshares >> 6 ); // Shift away precision from vests. It is noise
 });
}

Here you are. Everything you ever wanted to know is defined in those 33 lines of code.
Now that you have read them, isn’t it clear to you?

If you feel like this, don’t worry. I will help you to translate it to a human-understandable language.

 auto cv = cv_idx.find( boost::make_tuple( comment.id, db.get_account( op.voter ).id ) );

Out of all votes, get the vote info of the voter (you)

auto voter_rep = rep_idx.find( op.voter );
auto author_rep = rep_idx.find( op.author );

Get the reputation of the voter (you)
Get the reputation of the author of the post or comment

 // Rule #1: Must have non-negative reputation to effect another user's reputation
 if( voter_rep != rep_idx.end() && voter_rep->reputation < 0 ) return;

Self-documented, if you have a negative reputation, the process stops.
You have no influence on others’ reputations.

if( author_rep == rep_idx.end() )

The process checks the existing reputation of the author

• Case 1: the author has no reputation yet

    // Rule #2: If you are down voting another user, you must have more reputation than them to impact their reputation
    // User rep is 0, so requires voter having positive rep
    if( cv->rshares < 0 && !( voter_rep != rep_idx.end() && voter_rep->reputation > 0 )) return;

Self-documented, if your vote is negative and your reputation is not positive, the process stop.

    db.create< reputation_object >( [&]( reputation_object& r )

The reputation of the author is initialized, then ...

    r.reputation = ( cv->rshares >> 6 ); // Shift away precision from vests. It is noise

Your Reward Share becomes the new author's reputation.

• Case 2: the author has some reputation, and the process is pretty similar ...

    // Rule #2: If you are down voting another user, you must have more reputation than them to impact their reputation
    if( cv->rshares < 0 && !( voter_rep != rep_idx.end() && voter_rep->reputation > author_rep->reputation ) ) return;

Self-documented, if your vote is negative and your reputation is not greater than the author’s reputation, the process stop.

    db.modify( *author_rep, [&]( reputation_object& r )

The process will modify the existing author's reputation

    r.reputation += ( cv->rshares >> 6 ); // Shift away precision from vests. It is noise

Your Reward Share is added to the author’s reputation.

That’s it. Easy and simple.

Finally, the reputation is simply a VERY BIG number that contains the sum of all the Reward Shares of every vote associated with your posts and comments.
If someone unvotes your post, his Reward Shares get deduced and your reputation is lowered.
If your post or comment gets flagged, the Reward Share is deduced and your reputation is diminished.

To display it as a human readable number , you can use the following formula:

max(log10(abs(reputation))-9,0)*((reputation>= 0)?1:-1)*9+25

How to raise your reputation

The best way to increase your reputation is to get votes from people with a positive reputation and, even better, with a lot of voting power.

To achieve this goal:

• publish quality posts. Forget quantity, it's about quality!
• take part in the discussions (you can get extra rewards and reputation points for your comments)
• vote carefully (do not vote for crap posts, vote for appropriate content and authors)
• increase the number of followers and build your following list

Conclusion

I hope you now better understand how reputation works and how to build it.

Remember, reputation is a key factor that reflects how you behave and how the members of the community evaluate your work.

As in real life, having a high level of reputation is hard work and the long run.
And as in real life, ruining it can be very fast. Then it will be even harder to rebuild.

If you aim at a top reputation, focus on quality and on a constructive attitude.

Thanks for reading!

---

Check out my apps and services

Vote for me as a witness