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.
The problem is that everyone wants to know right now who is trustworthy and who is not.
Building a reputation takes time, often a lot of time. Amazon's reputation is built on several years of good service, good web design, and overwhelmingly positive customer experiences.
Facebook and Digg don't have that track record, and until they do will not enjoy the same level of trust.
Any system designed to give a stamp of approval needs only one mistake to become untrustworthy. Unless it can be nearly 100% foolproof it won't be effective. And given the number of supposedly trustworthy businesses who are anything but, I'd say that rating reputation is not likely to happen soon.
Three Squirrels
I haven't used my name for posting on the Internet since 1997 when I realized that dejanews.com would keep my newsgroup postings forever (even that was with a somewhat random e-mail address). I literally don't have any internet presence with my real name unless it's inadvertent (ie. a news release from my employer) but the good thing is that my name is so common I would be hard to find anyway.
So in it's place, I created a whole shitload of false identities that I post under, one of them about 10 years old now. Mainly on forums and newsgroups for work purposes, etc. If you searched for this particular identity, you would probably fine hundreds of posts (including many on slashdot) some of them truthful, some of them fake, with various opinions of topics.
Every few years I will discard an identity or create a new one, for various reasons. I even have a fake lj blog that I've created just for the purpose of having that sense of "credibility", just in case I need it. I usually update that every few weeks, with something that I read on someone else's blog, but changing the words around just enough so that I can't be googled and exposed as a fake. I make sure each identity has a different way of typing, different levels of typos or capitalization, etc. I don't think you would be able to properly gauge the "credibility" of this person at all.
I doubt I'm unique and there are probably scores of people doing the same thing. As internet users get more and more sophisticated, how will internet credibility really be gauged unless you actually meet someone face-to-face? I was even contemplating getting a pay-as-you-go cellphone with no traceability (paid with cash at a store in a different city than where I live) just in case I needed to talk with someone offline. I'm doubtful you can really establish credibility to the point where it's better to just assume that everyone is lying and be on the guard all the time.
Let's say you comment on the theory concerning the use of demolition explosives on one of the world trade centers - pointing out that the collapse of the WTC doesn't look like other building demolitions, or that the "symettric demolition" claim is incorrect.
However, the conspiracy theorists on the site are extremely fanatic about their theory (as opposed to a more moderate site that tries to investigate properly.) As a result, you receive a large quantity of negative feedback that attaches itself to your online reputation.
Other things that can affect you would be playing RTCW:ET, where you get kicked from a server for n00bism as you didn't dodge the three panzers that get fired into your local area (because another player thought you should have.)
And my personal favourite - just claim you support Bush. Your reputation would instantly tank.
I was going to post much the same thing, so it's refreshing to see someone else thinking that way.
The thing about Slashdot's karma is that it creates groupthink. As you've said, too many people care about it instead of just posting what they think. So they post what they perceive to be the popular opinion, even if that's not what they really think, or even if it's contrary to what they really think.
Frankly, I think groupthink is a bigger problem than even the goatse links. Groupthink is where rational information exchange dies. If you look at the worst bible-thumping communities, or at rabid theocracies, or at the worst excesses of history, and some of its biggest mistakes too, almost all were based on groupthink. Take a million people who individually think "jeez, X is stupid and evil" and put them in a big group where they think that everyone else is fundamentally and rabidly pro-X... and watch them all start chest-thumping for the very thing they secretly despise. Just to get brownie points with the rest of the gang.
When a whole village went and cheered about one of them being burned at the stake as a witch (for bonus points when everyone knew it's a bogus charge and the real reason is something like: widow without sons inherits some land, some rich guy wants her land), that was groupthink. "OMG, I can't let the other ones even think I'm not a rabid fundie. Why, my popularity would go down."
At the risk of tempting Goodwin's law (although it's not a comparison): when a few million Germans cheered about invading the USSR, that was groupthink too. "OMG, I can't let the others think I'm not patriotic."
And in our own times, when you look at such things as bible-thumping communities, or at the broken high-school culture where being smart is uncool and being an airhead is the apex of fashion... guess what? That's groupthink too. Once the ball got rolling, even kids who do understand that their future job does depend on it... still go and insult the nerd, because that's what brings them karma points with the rest of the group.
So, to cut a long story short, I actually _don't_ want that kind of global karma. I actually _want_ people to come forth and say what they think, and not what they think would be popular in that community. I want people to actually come forth and say stuff like "this war is bogus" or "the PATRIOT act is unconstitutional" and not devolve into sheep thinking "OMG, I can't have it follow me for the rest of my life that I'm not patriotic or that maybe I have something to hide". Even if it's something as unimportant as a games forum, I actually want people to come forth and tell me the bad parts about it, so I can make an informed decision. I don't want more of them to think "OMG, if I say anything bad, I'll come out as a troll." Etc.
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