A readable list on the blockchain would be more challenging.
I don't think that would be hard. Someone could make a dedicated account and store the list in custom_json operations whenever there's an update, then the front-end could just check the account history.
More challenging would be to decentralize the updates using some logic like Twitter's "Community Notes" logic so that no single person would need to maintain it. That would require some sort of UI software and a more robust protocol for the custom_json ops, and the front-end would have to scan the entire blockchain for updates. Obviously, hivemind would be better for that purpose, but I don't know how likely we are to get traction for hivemind updates.
This would be too late in the front end. The entire calculation would then have to be performed again and the order queried again... Hivemind is already the right choice, as the relevant score is already calculated there.
A custom_json operation would have the advantage that no additional API requests would be required, as certain custom_json operations are processed by Hivemind anyway. However, like you, I see the effort involved in securing this handling against "attacks" or only accepting it from a specific account (for example @steemitblog). Then there is the question of where/how Hivemind stores the data.
But quite feasible...
This leads me to the thought that there is/was something similar for beem. The account @fullnodeupdate contains (in its profile) data about RPC nodes and their performance. Unfortunately, these are no longer updated on Steem. However, this alternative also requires further checks to ensure reliability.
Ergo: Changing the score calculation with a static (code-based) list should not be difficult. However, the implementation of a dynamic list must be chosen wisely. We will have to discuss this further.
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Yeah, I was thinking that the front-end would refresh the list once an hour or once a day or something like that. Not to check it, interactively, while processing the feed.
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