[edmundsauto]

Any sort of public control over ranking algorithms will create a situation where the spammers and scammers win. Even sites that rank by timeline suffer from this (Craigslist). I don't see a situation where there is enough control for external people to understand the intricacies, without suffering from spam and eliminating any usefulness.

As an example, check out social competitors like this Holonis (www.holonis.com). They are just pure spam and self-promotion - what naturally happens when people who are incentivized to figure out the algorithm for profit are given more clear mappings between inputs and outputs.

[macilacilove]

I imagine participation being tied to verifiable (but potentially private in some contexts) real world identity. This is needed for voting to make sense too. In such arrangement it seems not difficult to discourage spamming. As I see spamming strives in circumstances where it is possible to create lots of untraceable identities almost freely.