[bo1024]

1) Cool. I'd add it's really important that everyone knows and believes that you won't insider trade, otherwise they might get scared off of participating. So the perception is important too.

2) Right, so, the way this can go wrong in theory (not saying it will happen in practice) is if a large group of users, or a small group with a lot of points, decide to all get together and focus on one alternative regardless of how good it is. They predict that alternative really strongly and vote against / predict against all the others.

Then, again in theory, you (the site operators) look at the votes and say 'wow, this database must be much better than all the others, we'd better use it.' Then the colluders all get their predictions proven true, so it's a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Here's one research study that looked at this kind of issue, although they end up not finding a lot of manipulation: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/315529106_Manipulat...