When I used 'reputation', I meant actual social reputation, not broken blockchain reputation. As you've stated, many users have a high blockchain reputation but low social reputation, and the opposite can easily occur when people with high blockchain reputation choose to trash those with high social reputation (but not as deep pockets).
The alternative score that is based on follows, which isn't based on votes on posts, if it were to become the main score to replace the existing reputation score, I could see as being one way to reduce the abusability of downvotes hitting reputation.
This I believe was the original intention of @steem-ua, though their implementation proved that a score based on followers can also be gamed, though not as easily as the blockchain reputation score.
I would expect any type of reputation system to be gameable to some degree. While the @steem-ua approach is not perfect, I do consider it way more useful as a metric than the existing and broken reputation score system.
That I agree with. Steem-ua's system is imperfect, but way better than the existing system. Unfortunately it did not gain enough support even to be added at condenser level.