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.
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...
Wow, almost as content-free and buzzword-driven as Jon! Care to tell us something we don't know?
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.
"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!
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
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.
Wait, I should *read* the article first, and *not* form an opinion based upon the article title? WTH? I've being doing it wrong!
It's funny you should say that, because I think this is a big part of the reason online fora like slashdot have such a high lurking rate. Most readers here never post, just as has always been true on mailing lists and Usenet. There's only a small core of vocal posters (the 80-20 rule, except it's more like 98-2 here).
So if people were less concerned, slashdot would have even more posts than it does. You could raise an interesting debate about whether the steady climb in posts has been due to increased readership, or increased participation (or more accurately, how those components boil down).
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).
--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
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.
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."
Yeah, but the content is rarely worth reading...
If your theory is different from practice, then your theory is wrong.
Well, it could be argued that if Microsoft themselves had NOT in the past attempted to manipulate public opinion with fake "grass roots support" campaigns that they would have more credibility in the public eye, and fewer people would be inclined to suspect that you are planted here by Microsoft. However, since MS has already shown that it does that sort of thing (they've been caught a few times), how can anybody now realistically trust any pro-Microsoft information on popular forums such as /.? Microsoft has dug their own grave on this one - they've destroyed their own credibility.
And people (surprise surprise) really really do not like being manipulated and deceived - they remember it, and don't want to be fooled again - so they consider it better to distrust any information that might just be more lies and manipulation. DO YOU BLAME THEM? I don't.
Then how do I keep telling the truth in such a way that I keep clear of the MS shill reputation?
In short, you can't. Microsoft, with their past behaviour, has made sure of this for you. Since they do do things like plant pro-MS posts in forums like this, any reasonable person knows not to trust any post that resembles a "planted" post.
Interestingly, one of the ways that more savvy "geurilla marketers" now try to deal with the problem of erosion of public trust is to try make their plants look like objective reviewers that people can trust. For example, the slashdot crowd is much more likely to trust the opinion of someone who claims to be "a Unix user, BUT ... (something positive about MS products) ..".
The whole of corporate America seems to be currently digging their own credibility graves in this way. In the short-term, cheap deceitful strategies like fake movie fan sites, fake positive reviews, fake pro-product postings on online forums, fake "news" articles in television and newspaper media etc, all of these will in the short term increase brand "mindshare". In the longer term though, as more and more people start to realise they're being manipulated, public trust will erode to the point where people will no longer believe even genuine positive articles about a product.
When companies stop this BS, then maybe people might begin to trust your opinions again. Until then, its a one-way slide downhill.
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
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.
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!?
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.