Hm... I think I get your point. I thought of the celebrity thing and the vote farm of being two issues of their own. The celebrities would likely get upvoted by a wide range of fans, with all kinds of voting power.
The vote farms I thought, would be a "business" in a gray zone market. The "employees" could upvote each other for a start... just imagine you have a few hundred "kids" doing that and then use their "power" to make money for the "business"... not sure if I make any sense..
I ike the picture, masses of "kids" sitting one next to the other in huge internet cafes and voting like crazy. Like those world of warcraft-players who dig something or earn items in order to sell them to western WoW players with less time but more money. But how to incentivize those mass-voters, when they themselve never get upvoted because they don´t contribute meaningful content? To calculate how much initial vests they need to create a self-sustaining dynamic of a revoting network is beyond my math skills :-)
And then comes in addition the issue with the voting bots which adds a level of complexity...
Understand what you are saying and it gives hope in a way, that it shows other systems haven't been brought down by similar behavior.
When I talked about vote farms I was referring to something I read, when people started to buy likes and fans for their facebook accounts. The article was about what they called "like farms". We are talking about kids in the poorest countries in the world, who'd never own their own cell phone or a computer. If they'd get a fraction of the profits they generate, I think they'd surely enough be highly motivated...
On a different not... may I ask what your profile picture shows?
We will see how it will evolve, if there is a way to exploit or abuse a system (the voting system in this case), unfortunately sooner or later somebody will find a way to do so.
Sure, it shows Takamatsu Toshitsugu, one of the greatest masters in Ninjutsu, and supposed to be the last real Ninja
http://www.angelfire.com/mi/budotaijutsu/Takamatsu.html
He is a model in many ways: self-disciplined, always modest&respectful but very skillful, and deadly if needed
Yes, we'll see :-) I have hopes, that community will "defend" itself though.
Thanks for the info on aster Takamatsu Toshitsugu... I thought it was an aikido master, but the picture is too small for me to accurately judge.
Would be a model for me to! Although I like the philosophy in aikido, where the opponent is supposed to remain unharmed