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.

Comments

Reputation, Online Communities, and User Numbers

[drendite]

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).

Reputation

[VP]

Based on the misinformed article on Unicode the author posted before, I am not going to bother reading his current article...

The new Jon Katz?

[Anonymous Coward]

In the beginning, there was email, available to a restricted group of mostly academics via ARPAnet ... With the discovery that emails could be threaded, discussion groups arose ... Even more, reputation began with what you posted, including flames... with the web came serious e-commerce ... ... here, suddenly, came the Web - where credible writing was king, and where travel agent hype met the awesome power of the "Back" button ... L.L. Bean came to the Web with an impeccable reputation of 90 years of quality goods, excellent service, and unconditional guarantees ... outside of e-commerce, the Web is presently a fairly weak means of enhancing one's reputation or agenda, because it provides no means for massive, coherent, "on message" propaganda ... I have yet to see a publicity hound gain prominence through the Internet alone ... a blogger is not exactly tuned to the concept of publishing nonsense simply because it comes from a government source ... one might hope that such a convergence leads on to the amplification of intelligence, rather than mere herd behavior, and lifts humanity to a new level of reasoning.

Wow, almost as content-free and buzzword-driven as Jon! Care to tell us something we don't know?

interesting description of /. in the article

[sczimme]

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 /. is this, then?

Re:interesting description of /. in the article

[jdkincad]

On Slashdot one has to read the original article, and think, or at least wade through the posts.

I find it amusing that reading the psots is given as an alternative to thinking.

Slashdot Commits Unicide

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Example:

[Lord Bitman]

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.

Your reputation ain't so hot...

[stefanlasiewski]

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!