Egregoros

Random thought:

You're a professor.

Instead of giving tests, you give team projects.

Teams are anywhere from 2 to 5 people.

At the beginning they're picked randomly, so that everyone in the class has experience working with everyone else.

At the end of each project, you anonymously ask each team member about every one of their team mates - particularly, would you like to work with this person in the future.

After everyone has some experience with each other, team selection is based on approval. You work with the people you want to work with and who want to work with you.

Final grade is based on the grades of the projects you worked on MULTIPLIED BY your approval rating by your partners in the project.

You cannot cheat on approvals because if you approve people who actually are not helpful, you will end up working with them again (!)

If you've got a friend group, you can give each other good marks all of the time - and you'll be together most of the time - but then you still have to deliver results.

If your project grade is a zero, you can give each other as much approval as you want but it's all multiplied by zero.

If the loner is uniquely capable of delivering project results - the group that's not stupid is going to take him in and make a place for him, because that raises their project and raises their scores.