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Personman [PersonRank 8]

Tuesday, February 19, 2008
16 years ago5,656 views

Just what we need – an incredibly easy way for trolls and griefers to ruin everyone's real lives as well as their online ones. No thanks.

Paul [PersonRank 0]

16 years ago #

'Why not have it for people?'

Because whenever someone did something altruistic, others, including the receiver of the altruism, would wonder if the person really did act altruistically, or just to get some stars. Such a system would therefore erode trust, and people's faith in humanity in general.

Zim [PersonRank 10]

16 years ago #

I think it's not that easy; lets think about this situation: there's a person who paints amazing, outstanding pictures and everybody likes his art (lets say 5/5stars); but one day he kills one kid (a 1/5stars behavior). Now, what must we say? He has a 3/5 reputation?
Maybe something like in The Sims, with different bars showing different "skills"? It's complex to simplificate a whole person, a human being, into something like "reputation" as we know it online.
We use to have reputation among those we know, and if you don't know someone, you ask "hey, what about that guy?"
We are not ready to do something like this until we can connect our brains to a large database (Google?) and know, with only looking someone, what kind of person he/she is.

[OT: I'm sorry I probably won't continue in the forum for some days because I'm moving to Buenos Aires. The good news, I'll try to visit Google Argentina in a near future and tell you about it!]

Roger Browne [PersonRank 10]

16 years ago #

Don't forget that retail companies are doing this already.

Except for minor purchases paid for in cash, they know your product return history, your creditworthiness, your purchasing habits, and therefore the types of products they should advertise to you.

Reto Meier [PersonRank 10]

16 years ago #

[put at-character here]Paul: If someone does something good is it ultimately important if they did it to gain a better reputation or through pure altruism? How important is motivation for judging a good act? If someone stops and helps me change a tire is it less helpful to me because he's doing so in the hopes of improving his star rating?

Personally I'm a cynic – I generally assume people do everything for some sort of reward – even if that reward is 'good karma' or 'because it's what Jesus would want' or 'it helps me sleep well at night'.

Take it another step – maybe such an incentive system would be positive, with people going around doing good deeds with the certain knowledge that they will be rewarded :)

On the other hand...

[put at-character here]Personman: That was the first thing that came to my mind too. Things I don't need: Black hat personrank SEOs.

Sebastian [PersonRank 0]

16 years ago #

What a stupid idea. Let's move the last thing possible online and build a platform around it. How about good old socializing and getting to know people the old fashioned way?

/pd [PersonRank 10]

16 years ago #

reputation economies is not easy to rate and fulfill. I once played in the beta area of omidyar net on itsreputation package, they closed the site in 2007.

"Trustworthiness" and "creditworthiness" are two items that are difficult to quanitfy. The human equation and perception differs from case to case.

e.g. was Einstein brilliant ?

Me : No – he create the model to create the H-bomb. He should have known better that his creation could destroy the human race.

Others : Yes- He has created a science that humans can pursue outer space travel and humanity can be populated on other plants!!

So how will you rate these two statements from each party in terms of truth and worthiness ?

David Orban [PersonRank 1]

16 years ago #

Actually there is already a system like this: http://www.rapleaf.com. It hasn't gained traction, but it works.

Also, Cory Doctorow's whuffie system is in the process of being implemented by the Bitchun Society http://bitchun.org/

Kyle Wegner [PersonRank 1]

16 years ago #

It would be interesting setting up a real world "Google Bomb" on someone or something. Get a huge group of friends together, target some random stranger (or maybe an eccentric person of interest) and flood them with a massive positive rating. This would draw huge attention from the surrounding crowd who would (hopefully) in turn start shooting their own ratings on this unsuspecting person. Watching the attention shift to this newly-celebrated stranger would be quite amusing I'm sure.

Though this could also be used negatively, as mentioned before, but I'd like to see the entertainment value in such a system.

DPic [PersonRank 10]

16 years ago #

Just wanted to pioint out-- you can rate people's trustworthiness, coolness, and sexiness on orkut

Also, i think this would encourage everybody to be better people-- even if a lot of them do it for shallow reasons

Greg Lastowka [PersonRank 1]

16 years ago #

Some people are seriously considering it. See this:

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=899144

DPic [PersonRank 10]

16 years ago #

One concern though-- anonymity.

Voice of Spoke [PersonRank 0]

16 years ago #

Full disclosure, I work for Spoke, a business connection utility where business people connect...
  
This is an interesting conversation regarding how to interpret identity reputation. As many have noted, it is by no means an objective subject. Identity reputation is a subjective term and is comprised solely by perception or multiple perceptions. People are entitled to their privacy and to pursue their own life choices. But at what point does your need to become aware of someone's "reputation" outweigh the needs of individual privacy?

In the business world, the answer is clear. Having all the information about a business's or person's reputation before working with them can be crucial to success. If you decided to partner with a company known for immoral activities, you or your company can be labeled as participating in the same practices simply by association. If you knew about this reputation prior to entering into this partnership, it could have been avoided. Spoke (http://www.spoke.com) offers a service for business people to meet and discover other professionals. By giving members the ability to leave comments about people or companies in Spoke, as well as rate those comments based upon type and relevancy, people using Spoke can find the right business contacts and avoid the lesson of "hindsight is always 20/20."

But what about individuals and their privacy? While the concept of Big Brother and a centralized governing system watching our every move (a la 1984 or Brazil) is less than ideal, there is some value to having publicly available information at your fingertips when you need it. What if you planned to buy a used car from a private party? Having the ability to run a reputation check on the seller could prove to be the difference between buying a quality used car and buying a lemon, or worse yet, stolen car.

Reputations before the pre-internet age had far less reach. The viral arena in which they existed was limited by the flow of communication. There was, as noted in this post, no central place where people could go to find out what experiences other people had had with a person or business. The birth of the Internet is about facilitating that communication flow, putting information at the tips of every person's hands. True – there is a downside to having a standardized reputation check and negatives can result from it. No one denies that. But there are also downsides to viral reputations as well. And the impact can carry a stronger brand and be longer lasting when it’s heard from someone's mouth. The only difference is who has access to the information. People who have "bad" reputations, or those wnating to keep their information strictly private, are the ones who will be against mass access to people's perceptions. Those with "good" reputations, or those seeking to learn more about another person, will be in favor of this trend.

I'm not advocating that it’s okay to take someone's confidential information and make it publicly known. But I am saying that if the information isn’t private and/or it is already out there, wouldn't it be valuable to aggregate it for easy viewing? If people post negative or incorrect information about you, speak up, write your side of the story, be proactive in getting your voice out there just as they did. Let those who read the information make up their own minds. Because that's what reputations are about, people's perceptions. In our country, everyone has the freedom to voice their opinions. It's whether others choose to listen to those opinions that makes any difference...

yewenyi [PersonRank 0]

16 years ago #

ratings systems are good. they need to include a time component...

Eugene Villar [PersonRank 5]

16 years ago #

No thanks. Unlike movies that remain the same 5 or 10 years from now, people change. Unless, of course, ratings that are given n time periods ago will expire.

Francis Ocoma [PersonRank 1]

16 years ago #

Yikes. If you think being modded-down in Slashdot by bigoted strangers were tough, wait until bullies in Real Life(TM) at school or work get to use this on you! Now way man, I'm not a public figure who could readily be "rated" by any random dude, you know...

Tony Ruscoe [PersonRank 10]

16 years ago #

What about this then:

http://www.rottenneighbor.com/

Via: http://www.boingboing.net/2008/02/22/site-helps-you-find.html

Stasevich [PersonRank 1]

16 years ago #

Awsome idea, i myself been thinking about system like this for years, im an IT person, and was even throwing some implementation ideas around with my IT friends couple years ago.
i belive system like this, if correctly implemented might work, and be trully revolutionary.
It deffinetly can be implemented for drivers, reporting wrekless drivers, etc.
Yes, its subjective, but the right tools, like great appeal system, moderator teams, that can review and overwrite stuff this can actually WORK!

Stasevich [PersonRank 1]

16 years ago #

just google around and there are plety of sites for bad drivers
like http://www.platewire.com/

i do have some ideas about the SYSTEM.
it can be BIG and the ONE, you would expect Google to come up with something like this in the future.

I think system should be allot more than RATING SYSTEM, or comment system.

YOU SHOULD Earn POINTS/KARMA, that you can spend giving points to other people(negative or positive) for things they do.
with right amount of people involved it can become self powered tool for CONSUMER PROTECTION, as today's version of BBB claims, is a JOKE. Most people just dont bother, or do it just because there's nothing else around.

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