Slashdot Mirror
The Reality of Online Reputation
Nicholas Carroll (of Why Unicode Won't Work On The Internet fame) has written a piece for Mindjack entitled "Spinning The Web: The Realities of Online Reputation Management". Trust me - the actual subject matter is a lot more interesting then the title *grin*. The essay is aimed toward companies online, but is applicable to individuals as well.
*grin*
Some online communities base reputation at least partly upon user numbers.
For example, the mere presence of words uttered by he who has a low user number shines forth radiantly upon all, bestowing in them great wisdom and happiness.
(Note: the higher user numbers are that much more removed from the Form of Wisdom and Happiness).
Especially when I am hiring. I learn more about people and companies via Google than via resume's and marketing-heavy websites.
Granted, I take everything I read on the Internet* with a grain of salt, but information, no matter the source, is helpful in decision making.
*Even /.! For example, the "selfish routing" story from last week. Anyone who knows BGP4 knows that article, and 99% of the comments about it were unalduterated and misinformed BS.
Based on the misinformed article on Unicode the author posted before, I am not going to bother reading his current article...
This article says that it is less work to form an opinion via a newspaper headline than by reading slashdot, for example.
But I think part of the unique nature of the internet is that much of an online businesses reputation will be made online, and through various discussion communities (slashdot, newsgroups, etc), rather than the mainstream media.
What's your GCNSEQNO?
Wow, almost as content-free and buzzword-driven as Jon! Care to tell us something we don't know?
Your comments deserve a much deserved score of 500. The top slashdot will allow. I hope you like ALPO dog food. That's what you win !
Add the occasional AllYourBase, and viola! Instant Karma!
You are not the customer.
Karma: Excellent (Mostly the result of successful online reputation management)
NetInfo connection failed for server 127.0.0.1/local
From the linked story:
To form an opinion based on reading Epinions or Slashdot takes a lot more work than soaking up a newspaper headline or drooling in front of the six o'clock news. On Epinions you have to read the various reviews and weigh them against each other. On Slashdot one has to read the original article, and think, or at least wade through the posts. (my emphasis)
Which
I want to drag this out as long as possible. Bring me my protractor.
If anybody was truly concerned about their online reputation, slashdot would have no posts.
Trolling is a art,
"For example, the mere presence of words uttered by he who has a low user number shines forth radiantly upon all, bestowing in them great wisdom and happiness."
Don't forget post count, that Anonymous Coward guy is extremely active on Slashdot!
as "Iraqi Minesweepers," sent out ahead of me to stomp their way along the information superhighway, making it safe for those of us with a greater sense of self preservation, and a few more grey cells, to navigate.
The term "bullet sponge" also comes to mind.
KFG
OK, send me your postal address so I can ship you my newborn.
Seriously, though, good article, though I think I can sum it up pretty quickly: To maintain a good reputation, tell the truth and offer good service (where applicable). Whodathunkit.
The other point is the question of when/if the Web will become something that can transform opinions... right now most of the vociferous opinion-raising is of the "preaching to the choir" sort, since if my visitor doesn't agree with me, they'll probably just leave...
"The best argument against democracy is a five minute chat with the average voter."
--Winston Churchill
Many of these reputation managers involve rating methods, from Epinions.com's Web of Trust, to eBay's ratings (and huge anti-fraud department), to Slashdot.org's highly-evolved Meta Moderation system.
These seem important to devotees of those web sites, and techies in particular are entranced by voting schemes. However, compared to the vast readership of a reputation manager like the Associated Press, with tens of millions of readers, or newscaster Paul Harvey, with enormous credibility and over 10 million devoted listeners, they are but a drop in the bucket, promising though they may be.
You see, sirs, you don't count. All of you taken together, even given your collective ability to cripple almost any site on the net, don't count.
For the humor challenged, :P
"My God, this must be a truly remarkable corn chip, to be so widely and confidently touted."
In general, it happens that the lower user numbers are more committed to the success of the site. However, just like anything on the 'net or in media at all, you need to take it with a grain of salt.
For example:
Parent post: insightful and relevant
Certain unnamed low-numbered users: immature trolls who just happened to stumble across something early on which later turned out to be big.
It still all depends on the person behind the number.
- Relativistic? That's barely Newtonian!
For anyone who cares, I wrote a paper titled Reputation Economy and the Internet. It talks about how reputation acts as a substitute for monetary worth, and also how the system compares to market economies.
---
Open Source Shirts
SLASHDOT COMMITS UNICIDE
Slaughters all non-ASCII-speaking netizens, film at eleven
THE HAGUE -- Robert ?CmdrTaco? Malda, the owner of the popular technology website Slash Dot, has become one of the first U.S. citizens to be indicted by the International Criminal Court for crimes against typography. The Court, authorized by the Rome Statute and ratified by over 60 nations, is charged with the duty of prosecuting individuals for serious human rights violations such as genocide, torture, and sexual slavery.
With this prosecution, the Court seems intent on adding a new crime to their docket, the crime of ?Unicide.?
?What this ?Taco Commander? did to the international community is unconscionable,? U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan was quoted saying. ?Yesterday, there was a flourishing Unicode-speaking population, numbering in the thousands. Today, there are none. They are all silenced. Their Unicode is either blocked by this so-called ?Lameness Filter? or silently wrenched from their messages.?
Slash Dot is home to at least 580,000 citizens, who hail from every Internet-equipped country in the world. However, many more ? perhaps nearly a million ? live anonymously amongst the ranks of registered citizens.
????? ? ?????, Prime Minister of ???? ?????????????, was outraged when he heard of Slash Dot?s decision to cleanse all Unicode-speaking individuals from their website.
The White House was dismayed by the decision of the Court to prosecute an American citizen for what the President deemed, a ?politicalized persecutorial.? White House spokesman Ari Flescher announced that the U.S. would, if pressed, go forward with their recently unveiled plan to invade the Netherlands, if this prosecution was not halted. ?This is absolutely stunning,? he said. ?That the United States would be expected to even acknowledge the presence of other character sets other than ASCII is an offense in its own right. You either write in ASCII, or you?re with the terrorists.?
Slash Dot, and its parent corporation, VA Software, were unavailable for comment.
so often moderation here on /. is so often poorly done? In the past three days, I've seen three posts that were +5's that were absolutely wrong. I could understand if one moderator was fooled, but enough to give them +5's? I'd really like to see less "are the moderators on drugs?" type comments.
Wait, I should *read* the article first, and *not* form an opinion based upon the article title? WTH? I've being doing it wrong!
Well, ok...but only if it comes with a good supply of Child Process onesies from Thinkgeek and it likes ALPO dog food...
He doesn't touch or mention at all 2 very effective reputation management (and creation/destruction) systems online at the moment:
EBay's seller ratings and BizRate's merchant ratings.
Both use the very powerful feedback system of actual customers being able to effectively swing a vendor's reputation.
Basically instead of slow word of mouth (how long did it take for LL Bean to get its reputation? years of word-of-mouth), both EBay and BizRate allow incredibly quick dissemination of someone's preceived reputation (and unlike many others, have good safety checks and are heavily self-policing -- just like any reputation management should be).
well since unicode seems to be working just fine (except on /. where I *still* can't insult people in Chinese), I'll assume this guy is an asshat and ignore him.
the hope of garnering respect.
THIS POST BROUGHT TO YOU BY THE YOU FAIL IT!! FAN CLUB!! Lameness filter encountered. Post aborted! Reason: Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING.
Trouncing suckers who can't post first.
And you just pointed out thing one (sorry, Thing 1!) that's wrong with slashdot.
Only ~650,000 to go...
Dear god man, you ask too much!!1!
In the beginning there was light. And the light was good.
Then God said words, words, words...
What was I talking about again??
Oh yeah, the seas and crap.
her bio says she has background in coding, marketing, foreign affairs, but says nothing about interesting writing.
But then of course I could be the one with ADS. or whatever. I don't think a lot of people on the net care if their reputaion is bad or not, as long as they make thier money.
Unicode is teh sux0r, real men use plain ascii characters 0x0A, 0x21-0x7E.
--free porn links for all my fans
Very popular slashdot journal for adul
Nicholas Carroll must be from bizarro world ;)
std::disclaimer<std::legalese> sig=new std::disclaimer; sig->dump(); delete sig;
After posting his thoughts on Unicode, the author no longer has a good online reputation. As a result, no one actually bothered to read this article.
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
Many of these reputation managers involve rating methods, from Epinions.com's Web of Trust, to eBay's ratings (and huge anti-fraud department), to Slashdot.org's highly-evolved Meta Moderation system.
It's a very brief mention, but it's there.
I want to drag this out as long as possible. Bring me my protractor.
Indeed, it is a well-known fact that bisexual turtles always screw up their indentation (regardless of sexual mood in fact). I would offer links and such to prove my point, but hey, this is slashdot.
So anyone could post bad info about me, as long as it's not slander. Competing job applicants could thwat my chances of being hired, or make me out as wrong for the job. Scary!
Yeah. I'm a dumbass. What can I say. I even RTFA.
I'm gay..did that ruin my online reputation? I think not..after all, there are quite a bit of people on /. that seem to think goatse.cx is great.
comes around behind the lines and pops me from the back.
Go figure.
KFG
maybe the poster was trolling for slashfags that would jump all over obviously incorrect code...hmm...
I have several identities, here on Slashdot. This is but one. I have fans[1] who are foes of my other identities and vice versa. I have many accounts I use for different purposes on Usenet.
My "official" email address, the one I give to people who matter, never reaches google. It doesn't exist as far as usenet is concerned. You need more than just a pinch of salt if you're using Google to research individuals.
[1] Just how stupid is that? fans and foes... Ya gotta laugh.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
In this book Orson Card shows (in early 1985) about building some sort of online reputation, so well that it helped one (special) children to be the world leader (not read the later books, so here ends for me what happened about this).
I don't think that kind of thigs would work in the actual internet... is too broad, and mostly moderated by the community. Also there is no "central" place where all interesting things happens . Google is near that, but the way you use it is very specific and user driven. And Slashdot, well, is news for nerds.
On slashdot, no matter how insightful, interesting, or funny your posts are, you can't decrease your userid number (unless you buy it [ebay.com]). But what you can do, is accumulate a lot of fans. Yes, the number of fans you have on slashdot seems way more important than the number of your userid.
And best of all, you can do it without having to be insightful, interesting, informative, or funny -- just post pr0n!
Do you want the popularity of Tracy Lords or Esther Dyson?
Libertarianism is rich wolves and poor sheep playing gambler's ruin for dinner.
But what you can do, is accumulate a lot of fans.
:)
Yes, but the number of fans is buried several clicks in your user profile, and thus your reputation is pretty obscured somewhere in those links.
When I read your post, it's not immediately obvious that $$$$$exyGal is a person with a good reputation (or should I say "reputation"
People with high karma can post with the "+1 Karma Bonus", but many readers disable the Karma bonus these days (I think it's off for new users by default).
I have "excellent" karma, many friends & fans, several freaks, and a good number of foes. But unless you spent a couple of minutes investigating my user profile, the only "reputation" that you see is my relatively low userid.
So in many ways, my reputation is better then yours. Nya nya!
Personally, I'd like to see the number of friends & fans in the grey user box that appears with every post, but I'm sure the poor databases are already hammered without these additional reads...
But maybe I'm just a reputation whore...
"Can of worms? The can is open... the worms are everywhere."
I'm having fun watching how many people seem to have *totally* missed the point of your post, which was rather amusing itself.
Good show.
I'm a cat person (no, not THAT kind of cat person) so I'll have to reward you with Meow Mix.
KFG
The article made sense, in fact, common sense, but there were a few interesting tidbits that made be do double takes:
In a similar vein, at present it would probably be impossible to spread a false "oil shortage" story through the Internet, as the American oil companies and mainstream media did in 1972. In fact the Internet would probably demolish such propaganda in days. In 1972, it was not until months later that a merchant marine officer told me how his oil supertanker had been held off the New Jersey coast for six weeks at the height of the "oil shortage."
Whaaat? Anybody know anything else about this? Crackpot conspiracy theory, or little known fact? Why in the world would this have been done?
The ethnic slaughters in the wake of Yugoslavia's disintegration were largely blamed on inflammatory talk radio - and the absence of contrary opinion.
Whaaat? Anybody know anything else about this?
Libertarianism is rich wolves and poor sheep playing gambler's ruin for dinner.
And that's why I'm your foe :-) You still always show up at 3.
"A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming, is not worth knowing" - Alan Perlis
But even with your user number of 3, you only have 56 comments...lot of wisdom you seem to be dispensing :)
I'm out of my mind right now, but feel free to leave a message.....
Hey, I'm not sure about that. Anonymous Coward has a user if of 666, and s/he doesn't seem very wise at all :)
"Can of worms? The can is open... the worms are everywhere."
Kinda. Why? Well, pretty simple. Its eaisy to skewer and out right lie online (in life too but to a lesser extent). In communities like /. or even ebay, you can skewer your moderation/seller rating and make it seem like your in the right. An uninformed opinion can be modded up here and a horrible seller can make it look like hes a good seller.
Also, post count is used sometimes to deem how popular or right someone is. I could flame all day, have thousands of IBTL posts, and other various ways to boost postcount on a board thus making it look like I have been around forever and that my word should be taken as face value. Not a real problem on smaller or non-commercial boards but on a site that offers some kind of service for pay, this is an issue.
Another issue with online, one person can destroy a business. Getting multiple log ins/ips to register bogus complaints againt a company is easy. Some people even write scripts to do this. The issue here is say you goto buy something from an online vendor and check out their seller rating and its 2.3. Would you buy from them? Proably not. Too bad that horrible rating may have come from one guy who either got a bad deal or could even be a competitor.
What am I saying here? Take all of the things that make someone or some company good or bad with a grain of salt. Do your own research instead of just relying on one source or someones post count.
I took your advice, and googled you.
Your reputation isn't very good. I see you were involved with some hype and computer crashes a few years ago, and caused millions of dollars in damage at some companies.
Geeze, I'd never hire you! You'd be lucky to get a job as a janitor at chicken farm!
"Can of worms? The can is open... the worms are everywhere."
So does that mean that the "If you believe in what you say, you'll put your name to it" crowd is wrong?
Unfortunately a reputation is not as much made by what you post but by how people respond.
For example I have the reputation of "a microsoft shill" or for the simple people "stupid". I have this reputation in spite of the fact that I use and like *nix products and often advocate using *nix depending on the task. My reputation came about when I started to question some of the assumptions and comments made by others. These assumptions and comments were "popular" and usually followed any discussion that included MS. By questioning the popular I became a "shill".
It strikes me as funny that in a community of "non-comformists" you can be ostracized for not conforming.
Recently I have been rebuked by some people for my opinion that Hakon Wium Lie's testing methodology and following conclusions about MS targeting opera 7 were incorrect. It was popular to say that MS is evil and it must all somehow be a conspiracy. Commentary continues to be that I am a MS apologist or mistaken, even though noone can disprove the facts I've presented.
So recently I asked the question "how does one turn the tide of public opinion". I mean if I'm labeled a MS shill because I believe (not in Microsoft but) in telling the truth. Then how do I keep telling the truth in such a way that I keep clear of the MS shill reputation? Or can I? Should I just keep quiet when anyone who is mistaken or repeats a lie about large unpopular companies.
"Do not be swept up in the momentum of mediocrity." - anon
Yeah, but the content is rarely worth reading...
If your theory is different from practice, then your theory is wrong.
>> and viola! Instant Karma!
Voilà...
Unless I'm wrong, I'm not French...
Viola is a musical instrument, similar to a guitar.
I love when you _try_ to speak French!
No, the test was of the return value for the assignment statement hemos=gay.
Presumably it would return true no matter what, which fits with how things work around here.
Not sure at all what any of this 'reputation' stuff means, however. Aren't we all (or almost all) of us using psuedonyms to start with?
Well, I see your posts marked "friend, fan, friend of friend, and foe of friend", and I'll admit all those colored dots do draw my eye - but only if you're already modded up high enough.
What if Slashdot put the little friend dots next to every post, not just the ones that are modded up?
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
My sister-in-law has a fussy white dog that wouldn't eat the cans of Alpo she bought it. So she send it home with my wife for our dog. It turns out that most of our cats will eat the Alpo. We have one cat (a small black kitten) who will eat almost anything it's given. Today I was eating the last of some powdermilk biscuits from last night and gave it a chunk to eat, too. It routinely eats the dry dog food (Kibbles and Chunks). We're not sure what to make of it.
Alpo dog food is sort of pricey, so Mister ID#3 is one lucky fellow. He should feel glad it's not Generic dry dog food (which our black kitten would probably like, even though the dog won't eat it)
Ahem.
Obviously, this is some quaint usage of the term "highly evolved" of which I was previously unaware.
www.eFax.com are spammers
'Esther Dyson' always sounds to me like the trademark name of a chemical that would be used to clean Washing Machines, or something of that nature. Have her parents been prosecuted for child abuse for giving her that name?
I'm annoyed by Slashdot's reputation system.
While I understand this is a company, they must safeguard themselves against terrorists blah blah blah, I get real upset when someone posts "Maybe" and gets 1 or 2 automatic points.
This is one of the main reasons I *don't* register. I want my posts to have value by themselves (have you got +5 funny as AC? it's a bliss).
But, by default, we get to read the -1 crap or the +1 from the registered folks. It's all or nothing.
I always have to choose Threshold 0 and nested and reload the entire thing. Sux!
But then there are those +2 posts worth nothing from those guys who got karma to burn.
Heck! I don't know, but could it be that some registered people post BS just to get a +1?
This is more in reference to this post (and other trolls) and the massive pile of useless websites / companies.
Contrary to common sense some just don't care about reputation.
Or is that, "pretend they don't care so hard that they start to believe it"??
"Peace, Love and Apathy"
Back in the old days of BBSing (yes, I think that was a frontpage story here yesterday) there were a variety of BBS packages that could be run. One in particular, I cannot remember it's name, but it ran on the Apple II, posted a user number and a 'rating' right up front as part of the header for all posts made.
I remember the particular BBS I first encountered running that software as being very, very cliquish and prone to elitism. Basically, it was one of the suckiest boards in town.
It was a BBS that had a role playing game online. They gave me sysop access on the board because I'd come in and repaired the hardware once (the keyboard had some joints that needed resoldering). Being the frolicksome fellow (bastard?) that I am, I used my sysop access one day to reroll all the characters.
I never had the nerve to call the board back after that.
So much for reputations.
Yeah, did you also just realize that nobody gives a fuck about what you ramble on about?
Yeah, but the content is rarely worth reading...
Ah, but you are impatient, grasshopper. My wisdom is there for those that will see it..
[bows]
[does fake kung-fu moves]
I love being able to argue with my tv and win for a change. Retortic and propaganda, as far as the mainstream media is concerned, doesn't stand a chance against the mildest scrutiny, *even on \.*.
(as goofy as this sounds)
The exposure to people from PhD's to trolls (remind you that's interchangeable) is usually informative and almost always funny.
Overall I'd have to give the experience a +5 interesting, informative, off-topic, abd +4 or -4 Troll.
I beleive her father is a rather famous physicist (Freeman Dyson, worked with Feynman on QED theory), and her mother is a mathematician. Last name came from the usual traditional way, and really, Esther's not that bad a name, and with parents like she has, she was very simply likely to be different from other kids, made fun of sometimes, and eventually, widely respected and succesful. I bet she took to the whole package just fine. :)
Libertarianism is rich wolves and poor sheep playing gambler's ruin for dinner.
Your fly is undone.
T'is better to keep one's mouth shut and be thought a fool than to open it and remove all doubt.
manaja aawy twas?
It has been a coding practice among some programmers to always write the constant first when doing comparisons, in order to avoid the possibility of missing an equal sign.
For instance, instead of writing "if (a == 3)" they would write "if (3 == a)", because "if (3 = a)"' would get an error at compile time, but "if (a = 3)" would compile correctly, assign the value of 3 to the variable a and the "if" would always result "true".
I have 10 negative comments out of 1500 on eBay. To the average buyer this means little. To the "I sit at home all day and like to be mean on Holidays" crowd, it's a flag and they agree with the OTHER 10 people. To the second person, I have a pattern of bad customer service. This is one reason I think ebay should make it as difficult to leave negative comments; as they make getting a credit for fees. (File Complaint after 7 days from auction, Wait 10 days for a response, File Non Paying bidder, wait 10 more days, apply for credit.)
The Better Business Bureau is no different. The ONLY way to get a complaint removed from your file or get it listed as resolved is DO EXACTLY what the Plaintiff says. I don't mean, just refund, if that's the case, but compensate and send a letter of apology if the Plaintiff requested it. Some people can not be satisfied, and some people get twisted pleasure out of misery.
It's hard to know a fair system. I think complaintants should have profiles too, This is one GOOD thing about eBay, you can view the "Feedback About Others" - in EVERY CASE the users that have left me negative, A) Did so by accident, B)Have a high percent of negatives on their feedback, or C) A high percent of bad experiences (as evidenced by their "FeedBack About Others")
It's one reason I like the "Karma" on /. - one is able to moderate more, the more Karma one has. One builds Karma by getting high scores for Insightful or Interesting comments, loses Karma by posting offtopic, negative, or stupid comments.
It is the fault of the complaintant if a transaction goes beyond the one step of asking/commenting nicely "There's something wrong, how can WE fix it?"
The customer is always right no matter what AS LONG as they are rational, professional, and thankful.
Yell & scream & rant & rave... it's no use... you need a shaaaave ~ Bugs Bunny
Dog food as a snack isn't particularly harmful, but don't make a practice of feeding dog food to a cat. Cats need food with a much higher protein content, and with a taurine supplement.
In real life, you can get away with saying stuff when you're blind drunk because nobody takes any notice of you.
Trouble is, people get in from a heavy night out, check email, check slashdot, then post some complete crap that you later regret.
Moral, Don't Drink and Post.
The thing that has always struck me about people is that even though most of them HAVE opinions they're not always prone to sharing those opinions. It's the way that everyone has an opinion about poilitics and yet still only a fraction of the populace votes.
Of course a lot of silence is in people online not wanting to chime in expressedly with a "Me Too!" opinion in the presence of a well expressed position that already outlines what they would say themselves if they only could spell, write with some skill, etc. It's the nice thing about the Anonymous Cowards system at Slashdot that people can, if they'd like, post whatever weird or netiquette violating opinion anonymously without slipping in their own opinion like a bad walk with your dog.
In the end though, I think the success of an online forum's credibility and reputation depends on a couple of factors. Slashdot is very geek/tech/IP heavy in content and slant. Everyone is surprised when someone speaks out in favor of Microsoft on Slashdot even when probably 80% of the readership uses Windows at some point in a day. The **IAA's are ridiculed and revealed at Slashdot, and if we don't always hear about the neatest new gizmo from Slashdot we at least know that in the culture of Slashdot that if someone has retailed a Linux machine Vibrator that SOMEONE at Slashdot has purchased the beast and will eventually post a review on how penguins are in bed. I don't think anyone comes to Slashdot for reviews on cars, because posters at Slashdot aren't perceived as being particularly of the greasemonkey/NASCAR set usually. People will have an opinion on which spark plugs are best at Slashdot but it will be weighted against the idea that the average posters would have less real experience than say the mass of people at a classic car forum.
One of the advantages of traditional media is that even if we can know that Dan Rather probably doesn't know much about Hot Air Ballooning, we all know that before he speaks out on a story about Hot Air Ballooning that at least someone from the news department has at least implied that they have made an effort to research the sport. Of course, that implication turns on them when they don't know what they're talking about anyways but everyone should know by now that the grains of salt size difference between CNN and a random internet poster is large.
People with high karma can post with the "+1 Karma Bonus", but many readers disable the Karma bonus these days
Speaking of the karma bonus when I first had that option I actually thought there was a negative to it: That by using it I would then lose karma. As such I got in the habit of never using it, and it really was just nuisance perpetually clicking the no karma bonus checkbox. The system probably would work better if one "Spent" karma (perhaps at a ratio of 5:1) when they used it, naturally limiting people to only "raising the volume" on points that they really think need to be made.
In other words, a complete and utter moron.
Seriously, after that Unicode article of his, anyone who knows anything about i18n can tell you this fellow is an idiot who does not do his research, and doesn't understand the things he does research. Just ignore him.
Free Hans!
Hey- check out the quote: ... to Slashdot.org's highly-evolved Meta Moderation system.
wait, 'highly-evolved'?
Sounds like the work of an Online reputation manager!
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
If government data mining were to be implemented ala Homeland Security then everyone is in the crosshairs for more potential damage than a silly bunch of fanatics holding a grudge because their children prefer bikinis and McDonalds more than their abusive orthodox religious beliefs. For instance, your AC status could be violated and your accounts audited on the basis of the word hijackers in your post - talk about reputation, who wants to be on a terrorist watch list?
And today if you did that to an onling RPG, you'd be in court on criminal cybervandalism & cyberterrorism charges, not to mention all the civil suits for pain and suffering from the ever-addicted.
(Which would be pretty ironic, since they should really be paying you for regained time and wages)
Now ask ourselves. What role can IPv6 play in shaping reputation?
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Court misses Internet opportunity
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The death of advertising?
"Whatever Happened to Corporate Ethics?"
Commentary: The American European Gap
I have never gotten any karma out of having a low user number on slashdot. Usually, I've just been flamed!
Damn newbs! Don't they know I was on the internet back when it ran over tin cans and string!?
You can disable it by default in your prefs.
It does "cost" you karma, in a sense, since posts made with the bonus are less likely to be modded up, and only can be upmodded three times instead of four (or nowadays, are only likely to be, unless someone with the karma bonus set to +0 sees your post at +4 and thinks it should be +5).
Of course, it's a question of whether you care what your posts are rated or your "reputation" (karma).
Personally I think the entire system is a joke, and I enjoy trolling it relentlessly. So adieu, and hot grits be with you.
I have no proof - but I personally think that the AC posts drunk.
His/her posts vary so much in content and subject matter that I figure them to be either raging alcoholics, or mentall ill.
Hmm, from the sounds of it, I suppose that means the AC is my grandma. That would explain those late night emails where she keeps telling me I'm "owned"
There are some odd things afoot now, in the Villa Straylight.
The kitten in question eats tons and tons of cat food too. She weighs less than half as much as any of the other (four) cats, but she dominates the cat food dishes.
We're not sure what she's going to be like as an adult cat.
At the top of the article is an image of a laptop open, and the desktop image is a huge head of a woman on the desktop of the laptop.
Were I a serial killer that decapitated my victims and then froze the heads for later perusal and admirement (is that even a word) - then I'd totally have that picture as my desktop background.
as a whole, the article raises some good points, but there were also parts that I disagreed with on many points - hell, the broad sweeping mention that the airline industry on the web was doomed from the start and then listing the reason as no face to face contact? fuck that, I disagree.
but this post isn't about my disagreement, it is about the scary blue head.
fear the head.
There are some odd things afoot now, in the Villa Straylight.
Possibly a fat cat.
What web links are there where some people might try sorting out matters of reputation?...
For example, law students' practicing the related skills of mediation or arbitration at
http://pon.harvard.edu
Like a frigid woman and that ever elusive orgasm your post is unworthy of a slashdot troll.
I protest against the use of "evolved"... this is unproved theory!
/. was created this way?
Maybe
Haha dork.
You forgot to click the anonymous box, and now we all know who you are.
It's not nice to threaten other people, dumbfuck.
Or a canary in a cage, but with big teeth and several nukes under it's belt.
>>I am overlooking email spammers here, since they have no reputation other than pond scum, and probably never will. Not that they care - for any given product or service, they make their money on the 0.00001% of the target audience that does not despise them
I've always thought that spammers posessed the reputation of Cow Shit or perhaps a rabid dripping Goat's Penis. Pond scum seems too mild a term.
Huh?
Obviously the number of fans, or user number, or karma are insufficient. What we need is a google-like system in which each user's cool factor is recursively defined by the number of fans, user number, karma, and cool factor of that user's fans. So having CmdrTaco as a fan gives you a bigger boost than having a raw newbie as a fan.
There's no point in questioning authority if you aren't going to listen to the answers.
For example, the mere presence of words uttered by he who has a low user number shines forth radiantly upon all, bestowing in them great wisdom and happiness.
I hope this is not true, else this comment -- while devoid of content -- will be ranked far too highly.
Note to mods - please mark this as 'Over-rated'. Thank you.
QA implies some kind of quality to begin with.
We're not sure what she's going to be like as an adult cat.
One word: Garfield.
Lost: Sig, white with black letters. No collar. Reward if found!
....er.... Takes one to know one...
:-)
D'oh!
Russ
... and never, ever play leapfrog with a unicorn.
Glurk...
But if you turn up the bonuses on your FOAF-meter, isn't that sort of a proxy... If their web of friends intersects with yours - karma bonus!
On the other face, there is no hand.
Keep your packets off my GNU/Girlfriend!
I find this site to be on the forefront of reputation technologies: PeerFear.org
Quod Erat Demonstrandum theory?
Sounds, err... useful.
Oh, your 60,000 range ID generation can be so snotty sometimes :)
Eve Fairbanks says I drive a hybrid!LOL
During the dot-com collapse, I regularly received hate mail, and threatening phone calls. Sometimes from angry CEOs. But not because I was wrong.
There is little joy in having been right about the dot-com collapse and the ensuing depression. Things are worse than I'd expected. I foresaw the collapse of the dot-coms in early 2000 (it wasn't hard if you can read a balance sheet), suspected the trouble at Enron, but had no idea so many old-economy companies would go under. I was expecting a flight to quality.
So I have a good reputation, but as a Cassandra.
What am I predicting now? We're years away from a stock market turnaround. Stock prices are still way too high by historical standards. We haven't reached the bottom yet. That's just from the numbers; the war situation may make things worse.
$$$$$exyGal . #naked . --free porn links
Seriously, there are better ways to get attention. It's not like you're doing this to feed your children.
#@(#) fans.sh -- Counts a Slashdot user's fans.
You've got a brain, so why cater to those who don't?
... who dares to use the word "milieu" but misspells it.
What can we say, we were hatched from bad eggs...
Wah!
Yeah, but the 40's are the Nazis that always point that out.... :)
OK, someone elses turn. We can do better than 19...
You old farts just need to get with the times!
"Can of worms? The can is open... the worms are everywhere."
Hahahahahahahahahahahahaha!
Oh, wait... you're serious, aren't you?
Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.
You might try worming her, its rare for cats, or any other animal, to eat that much and not put on weight, unless it is very active.
Degaussing scares the bad magnetism out of the monitor and fills it with good karma.
So... you're flatly contradicting one of the central theses of the article, which is that the mainstream media conveys a more coherent opinion, consistently, to more people, than any website can--or probably ever will--do.
Do you have any particular reason for holding this opinion? Have you noticed that people's opinions of Microsoft vary not with the opinion of Slashdot, but with the opinion of the mainstream media? Have you noticed that both Ebay and Yahoo, the purely online nature of their business notwithstanding, rely heavily on advertisements in the mainstream media, and enjoy extensive mainstream news coverage? Can you name any Internet-based company with a reputation that has been built without recourse to mainstream opinion-building?
Google, maybe, but without a proper statistical survey, I don't know. Do you?
Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.
Ok, but not by much ;-)
> UTF-8, aka UTF-FSS, still doesn't help.
Yes it does
The original post complained that UNICODE (as UCS-2) uses twice as much disk space as ASCII. The person you replied to pointed out, entirely accurately, that UTF-8 is exactly as efficient as ASCII for storing ASCII text. Similarly if most of your text is DBCS then you can simply use UCS-2 and be the same size in most cases.
Your other points are adequately answered by other posts. Of course it's not easy to support all human languages, but UNICODE makes the problem easier, not harder.
Yes, I was flatly contradicting one of the main theses of the article.
My reason for holding the opinion is probably quite flawed, in fact! I would like to believe that people dealing with online businesses are more likely to be swayed by their own research (via online communities or otherwise), rather than by the mainstream media.
I think you are right in citing google as an example -- it seemed to become popular more from being simple/ad-less/fast/accurate. Did word-of-mouth spread through online communities, online media or mainstream print (or other) media? I suppose this is outnumbered by the cases where reputation-building is done via the media.
It is true that the "mainstream media conveys a more coherent opinion, consistently, to more people". However, I was under the impression that most discerning consumers would form their own opinions based upon their online dealings, or online word-of-mouth.
PS: whoever modded my original comment as a troll really needs to get a clue.
What's your GCNSEQNO?
you have to stop worrying about truth or progress. That's your first problem. Once you throw those out the window, pick a team. Dem or Repub. US or Iraq. OSS or MS. Now you have to pretend that everything that your team does is right and everything the other team does is wrong. This, unfortunately, is how most 'debate' goes these days. Two teams fighting for half-truths instead of working toward a whole truth. It sickens me. (what a lame line that is, but it's the I can get to my true feelings without cursing)
The truth doesn't care what I think.
Not to mention the foe of friends, currently I don't penalize them, but I always scrutinize those comments a bit more than usual.
Perform an experiment sometime, save a couple of older stories at -1, then using grep, gawk, sort, unique, etc..., plot the distribution of user IDs. The number of posts coming from sub 100k is quite small.
PS I wish you had linked the posts you were referring to as I haven't seen any that match that description.
What about the 17s. :)
That is the single most British-looking dead woman's blue head I've ever seen.
Unfortunately, a couple of the more immature low user IDs are editors with unlimited karma. Again, no names named, but most people know who they are.
-a
I liked your article.
Just needed to say it as only trolls replied to your post till now...
Reinout
Reinout van Rees
People. Get real. Slasdot user numbers - I mean, how low can you go?
Kristian
Back in my day we didn't go posting willy-nilly with all this nonsense. We demonstrated some, oh some big word that I forgot, but you know what I mean.
;-)
Then again, a Bit cost two-bits then
Eve Fairbanks says I drive a hybrid!LOL
So thats why you are so silent... makes sense :-)
Viola is a musical instrument, similar to a guitar.
<Snigger>
It's a slightly larger version of the violin.
The author is an 'information architect' with Hastings Research. I'm not sufficiently hip to know what that means.
Brandishing Dangerous Logic
Argh! Why does Slashdot keep on linking to that bullshit Unicode article? The Unicode charset has over 1 million characters, and has room for more. It doesn't matter if you use 8 or 16 bit Unicode, it still has over one million chars. Lots of other slasdoters have posted this fact, but the Slashdot crew seems to be unable to pick up on this fact!
Let me guess, you bought a low userid account off of Ebay? You fucking clown, no wonder you get modded down so much, people aren't falling for your bullshit. I bet you don't even have your +1 bonus any more.
See this debate between David Friedman and Ed Meese.
n te r98/205.html
http://www-hoover.stanford.edu/main/uncommon/wi
Try this one (but the other is still something to read)
s _i n_%20cyberspace/contracts_in_cyberspace.htm
http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Academic/contract
Yes, the number of fans you have on slashdot seems way more important than the number of your userid.
Does this mean I overpaid again?
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
T'is even better to just not be a fool!
Agreed. There's so much pressure to provide positive feedback that there's a kind of grade inflation going on. Any seller who doesn't completely botch the transaction expects praise.
My own experience with feedback has been mostly at half.com, which eBay now owns. Two recent incidents:
(1) I ordered a book, and the seller promptly entered glowing feedback about what a good buyer I was. Not that I didn't appreciate the gesture, sorta, but on Half, all a buyer does is click the buy button and enter a credit card number, which Half processes. The whole "good communication, prompt payment" thing that happens at eBay is moot at Half. I can only assume the seller was hoping I'd reciprocate with similarly glowing feedback.
(2) I ordered a CD in "very good" condition from some bozo who sent it in a broken case with mismatched pieces (front cover from slimline case). Got stonewalled when I sent a complaint through Half. Before entering public feedback, I did a little digging and found that he had apparently retaliated against another buyer who gave him negative feedback. My feedback number is low enough (all positive, but only about 10 comments) that one retaliatory negative rating would really mess things up--how many people will do the research to determine if the bad rating is legit? So I held my nose and entered "neutral" feedback. Seller claimed the damage must've happened in the mail. Riiiiiight.
So I take positive feedback with a grain of salt, but even a "neutral" comment is a big red flag.
There is some loophole (which I don't completely understand, but is discussed in ebay forums) where "penny auctions" are used to stuff someone's feedback with positives.
I've found only their negative feedback counts in terms of how trustworthy they are: how much (no more than 0.3% for computer stuff, no more than 0.1% for anything else), what sort, and how they respond to it (as a good indicator of how they'll be to deal with if something DOES go wrong with your transaction).
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
Quod Erat Demonstrandum theory?
:)
Explains their fame, doesn't it?
While there are people working on proof-related theories, Feynman and Dyson worked up Quantum Electro Dynamics (QED).
Libertarianism is rich wolves and poor sheep playing gambler's ruin for dinner.
Your only obligation in any lifetime is to be true to yourself. Being
true to anyone else or anything else is not only impossible, but the
mark of a fake messiah. The simplest questions are the most profound.
Where were you born? Where is your home? Where are you going? What
are you doing? Think about these once in awhile and watch your answers
change.
-- Messiah's Handbook : Reminders for the Advanced Soul
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