When I first started writing on the Steem platform, I wondered how the reputation system works. Eventually, I get to find out more and realize that it is calculated based on the cumulative value of votes you get.
All this time, I treated reputation quite seriously. In fact, I had been tracking my reputation progress every month. It was until the [Byteball airdrop](https://steemit.com/byteball/@culgin/i-am-running-a-service-to-convert-byteball-to-steem) that I started to realize how it can easily be pumped up from 25 to 40 by buying upvotes. Since then, I started not to take it too seriously. That being said, I still consider hitting a reputation above 65 a remarkable feat as it is exponentially difficult to boost your reputation as it gets higher.
Recently, @steem-ua introduced a new "reputation" system called the User Authority. It basically assesses your authority based on how close you are to trustworthy accounts such as the witnesses. I think this is a better measure because it is much more difficult to game the system. Furthermore, since the Steem platform is fundamentally a social network, calculating authority based on value of connections/followership makes a lot of sense. If you are keen to find out more about @steem-ua, do check out [their post](https://steemit.com/ua/@steem-ua/introducing-userauthority-ua-steem-ua-and-ua-api)