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Score Integrity & Anti-Gaming

A reputation system is only as good as its defenses. HYFY's Trust Score is built with multiple independent layers of protection against manipulation, ensuring that scores reflect genuine community sentiment - not coordinated attacks or inflated reviews.

Defense Layers​

1. Reviewer Credibility Weighting​

Every rater on HYFY earns a credibility weight that determines how much influence their ratings carry. This weight is computed from several signals:

  • Experience - More ratings submitted over time earns greater influence, following a logarithmic curve
  • Accuracy - How close does the rater's judgment track the eventual community consensus?
  • Standing - The rater's own reputation in the community

New users start with a neutral baseline weight. Over time, trustworthy raters earn more influence while erratic or malicious raters see their impact reduced - automatically.

Why this matters: A coordinated attack using 100 new accounts will have minimal impact because each new account carries only baseline weight. Established, trustworthy raters naturally drown out the noise.

2. Rater Calibration​

People rate on different curves - some are generous, others are tough. HYFY adjusts each rating relative to the rater's historical pattern and the trait's community average. This ensures that:

  • A "5" from someone who gives everyone a "5" carries less surprise value
  • A "4" from a consistently tough rater carries more signal
  • The system captures relative sentiment, not just absolute numbers

3. Temporal Decay​

Recent ratings matter more than old ones. HYFY applies time-based decay to older ratings, ensuring that your Trust Score reflects your current standing - not something that happened a year ago.

  • Each rating carries a decay factor that diminishes its weight over successive rating versions
  • This naturally pushes the score toward more recent feedback
  • Older ratings are never deleted - they simply carry progressively less influence

4. Rate Limiting & Cooldowns​

You can't spam the system:

  • One update per day - After submitting a rating, you must wait before modifying it again
  • Update windows - Ratings can only be changed within a limited window after submission
  • Cooldown periods - After a rating locks, a mandatory cooldown must pass before a new version is allowed
  • Concurrency locks - Simultaneous duplicate submissions from the same rater are blocked at the database level

5. Audit Trail​

Every significant state change in the scoring system is logged and auditable:

  • Reviewer weight changes are recorded with old and new values
  • Score history is tracked over time for every user
  • Rating versions are preserved (including soft-deleted and reactivated ratings)

This creates a complete forensic record that can be reviewed if anomalies are detected.

Bayesian Smoothing​

Beyond the defense layers, Bayesian smoothing prevents extreme scores:

  • A brand-new profile with one 5-star rating won't display a perfect score
  • The system blends actual ratings with a community prior, producing scores that converge toward truth as more data arrives
  • A diminishing returns threshold prevents runaway scores at the top end - once you're "excellent", additional perfect ratings have less marginal impact

The Result​

These layers work independently and in combination. Gaming one layer (e.g., creating fake accounts) doesn't bypass the others (e.g., those accounts will have low credibility, their ratings will be calibrated against, and temporal decay will dilute their impact over time).

Bottom line: HYFY's scoring system is designed so that the only reliable way to improve your Trust Score is to genuinely participate well in the community.