No they had a trust rank. Which was more of an internal thing but it existed. They calculated a trust rank for domain owners and authors which wasn’t openly publicized. And they backed it up with the DMOZ Directory that they had acquired. But when the commercial websites came, they quickly dropped that algo, because BMW & Co had absolute no trust rank by then 🙂.
Discussion
TrustRank evolved from PageRank. It was inevitable that it would become evil because the entire endeavor was a centralized, global scoring system from the very beginning. The solution is not to get rid of algorithms or scores, but to personalize them.
How do you personalize it?
For starters, the nostr ecosystem needs WoT Service Providers that calculate WoT scores that are *personalized* and *portable*. I’ve written about this in several of my long form posts over the past few months. Developing this ecosystem is the main thrust of the WoT hackathon at nostr:npub1healthsx3swcgtknff7zwpg8aj2q7h49zecul5rz490f6z2zp59qnfvp8p, aka our #wotathon that goes through April. Importantly, these WoT Service Providers must be open source, which means you’ll have the option to do all the calculations yourself, as your own SP. Just like you can run your own BTC node and nostr relay if you so desire.
Why can’t a client alone do it?
They can, but they shouldn’t, as I argue in my article. Why not? Main reason: portability.
nostr:naddr1qq08xetsv9exzarfdahz6mmx9468yatnwskkzmny943kc6t9de6qyg89yuk7j99axqt4t3pehz8xjkdy8jwjveyrruync50fc7v6z6ss9upsgqqqw4rsrjey5u
Ok, I’m not reading all that. As I said, I don’t like that idea of WoT at all and not because of technical reasons. Portability can also be provided via relays. I don't like it either, having to rely on a third party service for that. But whoever enjoys it... it's not my thing. Doesn't fit my idea of sovereignty.