[mcantelon]

It'll likely end up working the same way it does on LinkedIn and Twitter. On LinkedIn I get strangers wanting to connect all the time so they can increase the surface perception of the the size of their network. And on Twitter it's similar: people who follow an implausibly large number of people in the hopes those people will follow back end up following me temporarily, hoping I'll follow back.

Is the amount of rep a person gives out visible on their profile? That would be useful in gauging how genuine their motiviation is.

[pplrep]

The amount of times they've given out rep is indeed visible on their profile.

[mcantelon]

Perfect. Would be easy, then, to make a greasemonkey plugin to do some simple math and work out a "sincerity ranking", etc.