Keep in mind that in general reputation algorithms have ways to mitigate abuse such as someone just marking themselves on another account. But nothing is full proof and human judgement by viewing the data on the marking ledger is always the best option.
Should people who give out a lot of marks to people be considering something like 'marking whales'?
Keep in mind that in general I do not give a damn on these reputation numbers, and you do not either. We both use that "human judgement" as only safe way.
And 'marking whales', seriously? What devilish kind of 'marking whale game' is up to plot? Do I have to believe the guys with the impressive big numbers, anything they say? Nope, woun't happen. Couldn't care less.
It's not meant to be a definitive system.
I'm not claiming at all that people should give people who mark a lot more presedence over others. The questions are just meant for discussion. Perhaps someone has an argument that someone should receive a small portion of reputation for their marking activity. Maybe they think otherwise. That's why I'm asking the community.
In one
implemenation, marks given is a recorded stat on the public ledger. On Poloniex's implementation I don't believe there is any way to see how many marks have been given by someone without scraping the data yourself. So we have different approaches. The point is to tailor marking for each community to make it do whatever it is you want it to do and show whatever data you want it to show. It's a flexible system with no predefined way of doing things.
An example of one users ledger. Scroll allllll the way down to see the raw statistics. There is no algorithm implemented on this implementation:
http://klaranet.com/recent?uri=https%3A%2F%2Fprojectbitmark.slack.com%2Fteam%2Fmelvincarvalho%23this