Blogs are important for Russia and other countries with censorship in traditional media.  When we want to read something interesting and important we go to blogs. We read blogs we have subscribed to or , more often, we use different blogs' ratings to figure out which post is the most read and the most linked now.

We have several ratings now.  The most popular is on the home page of Livejournal http://www.livejournal.com/  We had Yandex's rating but it was eliminated by Yandex under the pressure of Kremlin.  Now we have couple independent ratings that use the Yandex algorithm. For example Artemiy Lebedev - the most popular blogger in Russia - created his one  http://top.artlebedev.ru/  The problem is that people who want to manipulate public opinion can use these ratings by promoting their posts or blocking posts they don't like.

ProKremlin youth movements don't have any popular bloggers who support them thats why they use technical manipulation and cheat ratings all the time.  Actually now every day in TOP-10 posts we have at least 3 post written by "nashi" or "young guards'" activists. Mostly the only purpose of such posts is just a sort of harassment of non-government activists.

They use robots and bots to cheat the ratings.  It became a buisiness: everyone know that it costs about 5 000 roubles to promote your post and put it in the TOP-5.  People use that cheating for both politic and business.

The main problem is not that "nashi" can put their posts on the top of the day.  The ultimate problem is that cheating with ratings discredit blogs as a source of trustful and relevant information.  If that particular post has #1 on top of the day it doesn't mean that this post is interesting, important or discussed.  Cheating is creating a white noise in information field.

Challenge:

We need a kind of system, of rating, of algorithm which prevent all political or business-driven manipulation of ratings of blogs and posts.

It does not matter who wants to manipulate the information: Kremlin, liberals, nationalists or environmental activists. We must prevent it.

This system should have an open code so everyone can check it and be sure that system works against all cheaters and does not help one cheater against other.  The system will return trust to blogs. #1 in the top of the day will mean "the most important and discussed" again.