Re: gaming the system, voting rings and other tit-for-tat behaviors are very much alive and well down here in the Bay Area. Without getting into specifics, many

Re: gaming the system, voting rings and other tit-for-tat behaviors are very much alive and well down here in the Bay Area. Without getting into specifics, many groups here have strong if unwritten "upvote your friends" policies encouraging promotion of each other's commercial interests, irrespective of the quality of the articles. It's rather like special-interest politics, where the damage done to the community is large but dispersed (from upvoting trash), whereas the benefits are localized and perceptible. My social network is also the best source of news I have, but most of the information exchange takes place in private, often offline -- added plus that face-to-face is the only way to get access to a lot of quasi- or truly-confidential information.