Just chilling and sharing a stream of thought…
So how would a credibility system work and be implemented. What I envision is something similar to the up votes…
You have a credibility score, it starts a 0 neutral. You post something People don’t vote on if they like, the votes are for “good faith”
Good faith is You posted according to rules and started a discussion You argued in good faith and can separate with opposing opinions You clarified a topic for someone If someone has a polar opinion to yours and is being down voted because people don’t understand the system Etc.
It is tied to the user not the post
Good, bad, indifferent…?
Perfect the system
You will likely find such a system is ineffective because popular is still only a very limited niche of the total audience. Most people do not vote or actively participate.
Demographics are way more complicated than they first appear. When I was a buyer for a bike shop, the numbers were surprising. Around 65% of my business was all entry level stuff even though all three shops were high end road race and XC. It is easy to believe one understands the audience, but in my experience I only really trust solid numbers and data.
That said, a reputation based system of social hierarchy exists already in academia.
You would need to assess the compromises involved too. Who is not going to post what because of this form of bias. I’m one of those people that will post lots of oddball stuff the piques my curiosity. I would like some engagement, but I don’t care or focus on posting stuff that everyone will like. If some bias takes away all of my engagement for some popularity metric, I migrate somewhere else. I find most popular content humdrum and uninteresting.