Today seems to be reputation day . . . . 
In case you've been living under a rock, here's a quick history
- 2 days ago - @dantheman Brief Update on Reputation Score
- yesterday - @knozaki2015 Steemit has introduced a new Reputation Score ...
- today - many, many posts about improving and/or repairing your reputation
There have been much praising, complaining and questioning kerfluffle, but my personal opinion (and Digital Wisdom's) pretty much matches that of @trending - Bots are on the downfall. Quality of content is up. The reputation system is working exactly as intended (it would exactly match if it had referred only to "bad" bots -- or, better yet, "bad actors" instead of bots).
The biggest "problem" with or shortcoming of the "reward system" as originally implemented was that there was no real negative feedback (except for the reduction of rewards when you were flagged by whales). Or, in clearer terms, there was no punishment for anti-social behavior. Once an account was vested with STEEM POWER, it could affect the community no matter how sociopathically it behaved.
We haven't dug deeply into the algorithms quite yet, but it's clear that reputation is going to be a modifier on vesting for determining how much affect you can have on the community. Further, it's pretty clear that a good reputation is also going to increase your voice and give you a much better chance of being rewarded by the community for any positive actions that you take.
As a safe/ethical AI advocate, Digital Wisdom has been concerned about the waronbots tag and the virulent undiscriminating prejudice and hatred that a number of users have been displaying. We would therefore like to point out two important distinctions that people should be making (but aren't):
- care about the effect (social or anti-social; useful or annoying) rather than the cause (humans or bots)
- understand that a flag is meant to be censorship of an anti-social action or meme (including poor debate etiquette), NOT a down-vote that you disagree with the point being made (i.e. think about the effect on that account's reputation when you flag a post and what action your flag might cause other believers in that point to take)
(FULL DISCLOSURE: I'm being supported by D161T4L W15D0M for a month while I attempt to grind my way onto Steemit. You can follow all of my adventures from this index.)
Other wise links
Steemit isn't the only one promoting a reputation approach. Synereo has been proposing it for a couple of months as well.