I don't think this is a foregone conclusion. Numbers measuring proximity are useful. I.e., I'd rather know how many miles from my house someone lives than have google tell me travel time will "require a vehicle". People misinterpreting WoT numbers (which are a reasonably novel concept in social media, though not unprecedented) is a problem of importing popularity-concept metrics into a new medium. There are many ways to think about this problem, and I think you may be leaping to overly-opinionated solutions too quickly.