by Flemming Funch
Alex Halavais talks about an experiment with a karma/reputation system in a class he was teaching. The idea being that one had a certain number of points, and one could give them to others for doing good deeds, according to a simple system. But people cheated and the system fell apart.
I've noticed myself that it is rather difficult to make a functional reputation system. There is one in NCN, where people mark others as being 'acquaintances', 'friends' or 'comrades', meaning that they're somewhere on a scale between 'I know them' and 'I would trust them with my life'. Some of the problems I've noticed are:
- People have different norms. Some people feel they trust everybody unconditionally.
- Many people feel obliged to be reciprocal, even if they don't quite mean it.
- Some people try to have several virtual personalities, so they can give each other points.
- If there is a list of people's reputation ratings as numeric values, ordered in descending numeric order, people change their behavior and get competitive about getting better numbers.
- If I made the system, and I'm first on the list, people get suspicious.
- People who are very active get high ratings
- Some people end up hating reputation systems
Aside from that, it works fairly well. I just think I need to get rid of the comparative listing.
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