here's an algorithmic solution:
https://github.com/neyer/respect
we could give louder volume to people who we are more likely to respect.
rather than some the person, just give them a negative edge, and lessen their volume towards people that respect you.
i have an implementation running on facebook:
- How similar is this to PageRank?
- Is it possible to implement this system anonymously?
- What happens if I don't want to state publicly that I respect X, for fear of backlash or more simply that, while I respect X's opinion, I don't want to be seen to be associated with X?
you could do it anonymously if you trusted the party storign the data. i 'm going to add that to the FB version, so you can message the page privately. this would also work on reddit, hacker news, twitter or other sites.