Slashdot Mirror
Online Reputation Is Hard To Do
Symblized writes "A new article from InformationWeek argues that not only does the Web need ways to verify identity, it also needs better ways to measure reputation . The article uses Digg, Wikipedia, and eBay as examples and muses whether their models could be applied more widely. There's also a profile of Opinity, a company that tried to introduce a reputation system and didn't make it. Choice quote from a source in the article: 'The idea of a transferable, semantic reputation is identity nirvana.'"
"Trust is the currency of the participation age." -Jonathan Schwartz
This is the $64,000 question. Building a reputation/trust system is very difficult. Honestly, Slashdot is one of the better examples of this (Slashdot's moderation system does alter the flow of the discussion but it does get a downright reasonable signal-to-noise ratio vs other online communities).
I'm volunteering at Citizendium, which is another possible datapoint. We're assuming that real names and respecting verifiable expertise will allow us to benefit in some fashion from existing scholarly reputation systems, and to build a more cohesive community.
Eventually, I think it'll be feasible to layer reputation and credentials (for sites that care) on top of a system like OpenID. People will be able to choose what reputation/credentials to share with which site. Information that you want to follow you (e.g., "I have a BA in Math from UCLA" or "I have excellent karma on Slashdot") will follow you across sites.
But yeah, it's a very difficult problem. Figuring it out is a big, potentially very lucrative issue.
I think Wikipedia is a site that really needs to somehow integrate the reputation of it's contributors into the articles. I haven't kept up with the structural changes they've made in the past couple years, but a lot of the editing work seems to be undoing trolling and vandalism, and also participating in edit and revision wars. I could be wrong at this point.
But if wikipedia had a reputation system ( other than just being banned or allowed ), they might automate contributions from reputable authors ( and check on the actual contributions later), while authors who are less reputable may have their contributions queued for review before they are published.
Furthermore, a casual user would be able to have a more savvy understanding of the reputability of any article or section of an article if it is tagged with the reputation of its' author.
Reputable authors might be able to also tag the contributions of others, such that the text or information itself gets a reputation. That would help users make a judgement about the validity of information on Wikipedia.
Instead of pushing the mechanics of the actual editing of articles behind the scenes, and just presenting a 'final' article to the end-user, let's formalize the process and enfranchise users into the process of judging the validity of articles.
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
Even still, it is hard to rank someones reputation based on a numbers system. In alot of forums I post on, I am a regular poster with a high rank. However, alot of people have an issue with me because of my free speech (the beauty of the internet). Is there really a standardized way to determine reputation? It really has to do with the context. If you are on a programming forum, you may rank someone based on their aptitude for a specific language, or their problem-solving skills. Conversely, if you are on a political debate forum, ones reputation may be based on how fluently their opinions are expressed.
It seems that everyone trying to "solve" this "problem" doesn't know what they're trying to achieve.
So what if you can make a perfect pseudonym identification system? What does that achieve for you? What do you accomplish beyond that?
Does it really matter to anyone else if your Slashdot 'nym can be verified to match your 'nym's on a dozen other boards? Who really cares if you have excellent karma on Slashdot?
I don't align politics-wise/religion-wise on this site, so while I have excellent Slashdot karma (built up over a very looong period of time commenting on non-sensitive topics for this audience), I wouldn't otherwise be considered having a very good reputation here.
There's that plus many sites like these are mostly just kids playing around and/or just mouthing off saying any ridiculous thing because they can. And practicing to be good little enforcers of Political Correctness for when they get older.
So, an online reputation based on sites like this at least, is valueless. The value of a reputation is only as good as the people who judge it are worthy to judge.
Heatware Most frequently trusted on many For Sale/For Trade forums because of their strong stance on scammers.
So you're saying that it would help filter out a majority of the "complete mumpty".
That's a possibility. But it would be even easier to just use Slashdot's reputation/moderation system on your own site. That would solve the "complete mumpty" problem while also solving the problem of someone with excellent karma for his programming knowledge posting his conspiracy theories on your site.
And it automatically tunes itself to your audience.
Not really. Check back on the "creationism vs evolution" stories here.
What would be considered "good stuff" on one site (or even by one moderator) would be considered ignorant drivel on another site (or by a different moderator).
You achieve all the same benefits without the problems just by having your own reputation/moderation system.
It's why we have exams, professional organisations, CVs, brands, social networking etc etc etc.
We use reputation all the time and no-one has come up with a single reliable, coherent way of measuring it. You just try to get a decent builder.
Deleted
This is a problem with real life. There's a truism along the lines of "you never really know who another person is, you only know what they've shown you." This goes hand in glove with another truism: "perception is reality." Every one of us creates models of people in our life to better understand what makes them tick, how they operate. Once we feel comfortable enough in our understanding of that person we can say things like "Oh, X is going to love this!" or "Just wait until Y hears about this, I know he's going to flip!" But do we really know the person? Not really. We only know what we see. And if we like someone, we tend to gloss over the negatives. After shit happens, you'll get an earful from friends as to why it should have been obvious but they kept their mouths shut beforehand for fear of alienating you. And they were right. Would you have listene to them? Of course, not. Bad relationships, can I get an amen in here?
I tend to classify people into the following categories: good to have a beer with, someone I would introduce to other people I know, someone I can trust with something semi-important and people I can trust with things that are very fucking heavy. Most of the social drama I see comes down to someone mistaking a casual friend for someone that can be trusted with something heavy. "What, you're upset that Weasel slept in and forgot to drive you to the airport? Why are you so surprised? This is Weasel, the guy with the reputation as the heaviest drinker in the city. He's fun at a party but you actually thought you could rely on him for something more than a laugh? You made the mistake here, not him." Of course, that's exactly the sort of thing you don't say or the drama will shift to you.
So this is all normal human social dynamics, web doesn't have anything to do with it. People were doing long-distance business with people they didn't know personally for thousands and thousands of years before computers were invented. It all comes down to trust. Does the person have a reputation? Can someone else vouch for him? Someone using a fake or young ID on the net is no different from someone using an alias in the past. And what does it come down to in real life and on the web? One simple question: "Is there enough incentive to fuck me over in this deal for the guy to throw away his reputation?" Because it takes time to earn a reputation, get seller feedback on Ebay, etc. Do people put time into pulling off a proper con? Of course. Just look at the con men who go after little old ladies. This isn't just scamming someone one the net, this is full on interaction, romancing, sleeping with, trying to convince the mark you're legit so you can get the means of fucking her over for the inheritance. But do you think that the high stakes con man is going to try fucking over your grandma for her social security check? I don't think so.
Even when someone has good reputation, you don't know what he has going on in his life. Maybe something has come up that means something is more important. I've seen businesses with formerly stellar reputations go to pot because the owner has other things on his mind.
Figure out a way to fix this problem in real life and you'll have a model for how to do it online.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
eBay's system of who you can trust and who you cannot doesn't work. Generally, even theives have a good feedback rating on ebay, and worst of all, the average joe who isn't an eBay powerseller or doesn't have his own ebay "store" is likely to get shafted because eBay only cares about fees, not feedback.
For example, a user with a feedback of 1 can buy something from a seller with a feedback of 450, and then complain to ebay. The user of with the feeback of 1 can have the seller's account suspended despite the vast chasm of difference between the seller's feedback and the buyers, and ebay makes NO distinction over which party has the better reputation.
It all comes down to who files the dispute first. Either that or eBay just assumes the seller is always at fault.
Ebay's dirty little secret is that you can create an account, buy something, and essentially get it for free from the seller because the only way the seller has to resolve the suspended account is to refund the payment. There is NO other recourse.
And "reputation" means nothing to ebay. You could have created the buyer's account a week ago, and take down a seller who has been a good seller on ebay for years.
And when Ebay gets wise to you, create a new email account on yahoo, start again, buy something, register a complaint and get it for free, because the seller has to refund your money.
So; how exactly does eBay's system "work"?
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
Some of us have posted under nothing but our real names for years, knowing that every post was only adding to our online metaprofile, and if the bulk of what we posted was helpful or useful or at least sensible, we were building up years of easily accessed credentials to help people understand they could rely on information from us a little more than Joe Q. Internet.
Why you would choose to be anon in a world where reputation is growing in importantance every day has always been beyond me.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Identity is really the easiest part of the problem.
But reputation is easy as well. The problem with most proposals is that they are focused on organizational reputation rather than personal reputation.
Reputation, however, is relative and contextual. We don't need Slashdot vouching for us, we need people in our own address book / social network. Then we can vouch for our friends/family in various ways ("this person isn't a spammer", "this person knows a lot about cars", etc.).
But the real power of a personal reputation system is that it is transitive. If I trust that Alice is not a spammer, and Alice trusts that Bob is not a spammer, I can to some degree also trust Bob, and so can my friends, etc. A few degrees of Kevin Bacon there and you've got a real system.
Such a system allows for anonymity as well. I don't need to use my real name if I can generate some other identity and foster trust in some other community. As long as the identity token itself is secure, they don't need to know my name, they just need to know I'm not a troll, I'm insightful (hint hint), etc.
My vision of such a system would use SMTP as the transport mechanism for requesting and relaying trust between parties. Mail agents would handle the requests automatically, like calendar-enabled mail programs do now, and it is a fully-distributed system. Mail clients would also cache trust from their own "friends," like DNS, to better respond to requests.
This degrades well, since the emails can contain manual instructions for those whose mail clients don't have this feature. Or their Internet providers can help with server-based responses, so the mail client doesn't even need to be involved in most cases.
With such a system, spam would mostly be a thing of the past. I can limit incoming email to only people in my Address Book, people in theirs, etc. out to some limit of degree. Chances are, that will quickly encompass everyone likely to want to send me a legitimate email, and bounce away people with no legitimate friends (spammers). The system would self-correct when accounts are compromised or people unwittingly trust spammers, and if a friend of mine is too naive and adds spammers to his list constantly, I can stop trusting his list.
We really do need a ubiquitous identity-trust system, something that uses existing protocols to share trust and integrates with IM, email, online forums, auction sites, etc. But the problem itself isn't that hard.