The original idea of Steem was to provide a way of assessing 'proof of brain', so the subjectively 'best' posts get rewarded. This immediately met with the competing force of 'proof of wallet' - whereby those with the most Steem Power rose to the top. Using the 'reputation' system plays in to 'proof of wallet'. Using the steem-ua system (as far as I understand the algorithm) is a bit better in that it allows the community as a whole something more of a say, however, it certainly does appear to skew that in favour of the witnesses (rather than just whoever has the most money). In a sense, basing such things on money could be said to have some validity, but only if 'proof of brain' is already working (since those with higher quality work will also have more steem power) - however, since 'proof of brain' is competing with 'proof of wallet' - we have a problem.
My solution was to look at the 'generosity' of the voters on the blockchain to attempt to assess their level of social activity and support of others - rather than just looking at their wallet or their closeness to witnesses etc.
I still think this is one of the better ways to measure things, but it is not perfect. Ultimately, any such assessment is subjective - so there will always be those who are for or against it.
Thanks for your good explanation @ura-soul. I like your generosity concept it would be great to measure who is really supporting the Steem community at a wider range.
What comes to my mind in this whole discussion is that it would be nice to have different steem-ua measurement tools for different purposes. For example lets use Steem-ua for ranking posts in the trending section. Lets use your generosity Index to determine who is sharing and spreading the Steempower effectively. Lets create Steem-IA for investors to measure who is willing to hold on to its stake when it comes to Airdrops of SMT ( for example your score would be lower if you power down or selling steem but higher if you hold on to Steem power and if you are a buyer of Steem). Or lets create Steem-DA for developers.
Therefore different measurement tools would be more effective and the different kind of users ( content creators, investors, developers, witnesses) could focus more on their field of interest.
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Yes, those are all possible approaches - though I'm not sure how development could be tracked in a truly useful way, other perhaps than by having close human monitoring and also possibly keeping track of @steemprojects data.
I will bare all of this in mind in case I get more investor and developer attention (or I get more time to work on steemocean myself) :)
Thanks for having this conversation with you I really appreciate it. I guess ideas are easy to write down but harder to implement. Lets keep on working so that Steem becomes a place were everybody feels home.
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You are welcome, thanks for your thoughts too. Yes, there is always a process from imagination through to fruition with software and usually the implementation aspect is the most challenging and intensive.