This diary is about ratings abuse. Not the usual ratings abuse diary asking trolls to behave themselves, but rather, a proposal for a possible technical solution.
In my view, the crux of the problem is the fact that anybody can hand out 1's and 2's like their candy. And low ratings are definitely not sweet.
If there is a troll on your butt, giving you 1's every time you post a comment, there's almost nothing you can do about it except complain. You can retaliate, and give all of their comments 1's, but that sucks. You can ask everyone else to help you go give the troll some 1's, but then the troll will just go after them too. In addition, the troll might not even have any comments to mark down.
Here's the idea: Scoop makes a new counter for each user, call it TrollMojo. Whenever you receive a 4, TrollMojo is increased. Whenever you give a 3, 2 or 1, TrollMojo is decreased. You only get as much venom as you earn.
So for an example, let's say whenever you receive a 4, then TrollMojo is increased by 1.
whenever you give a 4, TrollMojo stays the same.
whenever you give a 3, TrollMojo is decreased by 1.
whenever you give a 2, TrollMojo is decreased by 2.
whenever you give a 1, TrollMojo is decreased by 3.
whenever you give a 0, TrollMojo stays the same.
So that's it. You have to earn your venom. I don't know if this is feasable and it probably won't stop all ratings abuse, but I think it would stop an awful lot of it.
What do you think?