>I think small communities where people actually have to maintain a reputation are the future, and the past.

I believe early on in the internet, there was more discussion of reputation systems like you see for eBay sellers.

Seems like this area hasn't advanced very much. You've got karma systems like on HN, and follow-count systems like on X or Instagram, but both of those arguably track "usage intensity" x "susceptibility to audience capture" more than "reputation".

Low-hanging fruit would be if X showed you the number of Community Notes a user has received. They aren't even bothering to do that.

Plus, just how exams only test you on how good you are at exams, those systems only show how good you are at getting likes, votes, followers, etc. You can have a billion followers, doesn't mean anything to me other than you're good at getting followers. Which now that I think about it, says enough.