i thought a bit more about the imdb style rating system, and it occurred to me: has anyone created a graph showing how movie ratings are distributed on imdb? i found exactly what i was looking for very quickly:

now, this is called a
normal distribution. if you don't know what it is, you can understand the logic behind it with a little exploration. in almost every case where there is enough data, distributions occur this way in terms of a feature. you can think of it as one of the laws of nature, or as a mathematical proof.
what i want to mention is that, even though i don't really understand the code and the background of what's being done here, i think that if we can understand what kind of distribution the system we're currently using shows for active members on the forum, we can easily pinpoint where the error is.
after all, the vast majority of members on this forum should have a brdb between 4 and 6. an average member could be here. below this threshold, there are only spammers posting empty messages and bot accounts, while as the score goes up, the quality of the members should increase and their frequency should decrease.
in addition to all this, we must not forget that a bitcointalk user's “quality” is too complex to be calculated using a formula created by comparing post and merit counts using different methods. no matter how much we develop it, it's still just a project. still, i've always loved ideas like this, so i'm supporting it.