Potential Virians are by definition those who accept the "Virian Virtues", reject the "Senseless Sins", and share the goals of the Church of Virus.
Virians are those who assert themselves to be Virians and are accepted as Virians by the members of the Church of Virus.
The Church of Virus maintains a "Reputation rating system" which permits any member of this system to rate all of the other members of the system.
The system calculates the reputation of members depending on how they are perceived by themselves and other Virians.
1. This person should be banned
2. Little or no redeeming value
3. Strongly negative opinion
4. Slight negative opinion
5. Neutral or no opinion
6. Slight positive opinion
7. Strong positive opinion
8. A credit to the the community
9. A pillar of the community
For the purpose of evaluating 'Reputation', 'Influence' and 'Equity', members who are not yet rated by others are administratively allocated a 'neutral Reputation' of 5.
A computer algorithm converts this assigned 'Reputation' into:
Reputation The average rating weighted by each member's influence.
Influence How much weight the member's opinion carries. This is calculated from the reputation such that in a community of N members the voting weight is allocated as:
The exact formula to calculate an influence from a reputation R is e^(ln(N)*2*(R-5)/(9-1)).
Members in good standing of the Church of Virus who are members of the "Reputation rating system" are refered to as the Virian Congregation.
See also Sumucracy