So there's no reason to think that this one should "shine" at all.
A good reputation (UA score), being highly regarded and thus having many followers, can also be based for example on being a good developer, a wise witness or a precious curator.
And finally, if there is no logical reason at all for having a high UA score, then many people could simply decide to unfollow a certain account so that its UA would decrease.
Hold up. Let's be frank. There's no way that a "precious curator" is going to have a high UA score, given the things that are defined as the inputs into the algorithm which drive the ranking.
A curator has no reason to be followed, and so they don't tend to be. They don't tend to delegate out large amounts of SP, they don't tend to leave a lot of comments (because curation is hard enough as is, and unless they're a bot or bot-assisted they don't have time thanks to the fact that Steemit makes content discovery and uphill battle), or in any other way interact with the blockchain in ways which this metric considers useful.
A fact which has been pointed out to you by other people as well.
No one will stop following someone that they have on their list because they think their UA score is too high. That is ridiculously stupid and you should be embarrassed for even saying that in public. People stop following an account because they write or publish things that the follower doesn't want to see, so they stop following them so they no longer see that content.
A lot of this is just coming down to you guys saying, "UA is an important metric because we say it's an important metric and it measures lots of things and you're going to want to change your behavior because it measures things."
No. That's not how this works.
How is UA better than a near trivially computed metric based on an accounts number of followers divided by the number of people that it follows? How does give me any more information than just that? As a user, I know how the simpler metric fails, and I know how it succeeds and what it does. I understand what it communicates. UA does none of that.
I like a good fever dream as much as the next guy, but this is silly.
I see no reason why a curator shouldn't have a high UA score. Especially if UA could have an impact on voting weight in future. In my recent article I mentioned the example formula:
vote_worth = UA(voter) / UA(average) • SP • vote_strength.
If a high UA score strengthened the voting value of a curator (who may upvote your articles), then of course it could be worth to follow him.
I will. And I did already. I unfollowed inactive accounts as well as accounts which make much money with less effort in my opinion.
Somewhat related: thank you very much for defending me with your full-power vote in another discussion thread, I haven't got such a strong upvote for a year, literally
You are welcome! :)