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.

Erm...

interesting then the title *grin*.

*grin*

Reputation, Online Communities, and User Numbers

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).

Re:Reputation, Online Communities, and User Number

"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!

Re:Reputation, Online Communities, and User Number

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.

Re:Reputation, Online Communities, and User Number

For anyone who cares, I wrote a paper titled Reputation Economy and the Internet [iloha.net]. It talks about how reputation acts as a substitute for monetary worth, and also how the system compares to market economies.

Re:Reputation, Online Communities, and User Number

On slashdot, no matter how insightful, interesting, or funny your posts are, you can't decrease your userid number (unless you buy it [ebay.com]). But what you can do, is accumulate a lot of fans. Yes, the number of fans you have on slashdot seems way more important than the number of your userid.

--free porn links for all my fans [slashdot.org]

I Google everything and everybody.

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.

Re:I Google everything and everybody.

You need to be careful when Googling your applicants. Remember that there are multiple John Smiths out there. Also, be sure that the article posted in John Smith's name is the real John Smith. If he's managed to annoy a troll on Usenet, there's a possibility that this troll may post inflammatory messages using John's email address, so you'll think that John's being immature when it's actually the troll.

Your reputation ain't so hot...

I took your advice, and googled you [google.com].

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!

Reputation

Based on the misinformed article on Unicode the author posted before, I am not going to bother reading his current article...

Re:Reputation

No shit. His last article was libelous, and several slashdot readers turned up the truth that his employer was working on a proprietary competitor to the Unicode standard.

How about this little snippet?

[...]being a 16-bit character definition allowing a theoretical total of over 65,000 characters. However, the complete character sets of the world add up to approximately 170,000 characters.

This person does not even do the most cursory research on his subjects. For the uninformed, Unicode [unicode.org] assigns a unique address to every human character (i.e., letter, kanji, heiroglyph). The entire code range is 32-bit (4,294,967,296), with various text formats for addressing those codes (UTF-8 and UTF-16 being the most popular).

This person is, at best, an attention seeker. He's more likely a very public troll.

Over-estimating the influence of mainstream media

This article says that it is less work to form an opinion via a newspaper headline than by reading slashdot, for example.

But I think part of the unique nature of the internet is that much of an online businesses reputation will be made online, and through various discussion communities (slashdot, newsgroups, etc), rather than the mainstream media.

The new Jon Katz?

In the beginning, there was email, available to a restricted group of mostly academics via ARPAnet ... With the discovery that emails could be threaded, discussion groups arose ... Even more, reputation began with what you posted, including flames... with the web came serious e-commerce ... ... here, suddenly, came the Web - where credible writing was king, and where travel agent hype met the awesome power of the "Back" button ... L.L. Bean came to the Web with an impeccable reputation of 90 years of quality goods, excellent service, and unconditional guarantees ... outside of e-commerce, the Web is presently a fairly weak means of enhancing one's reputation or agenda, because it provides no means for massive, coherent, "on message" propaganda ... I have yet to see a publicity hound gain prominence through the Internet alone ... a blogger is not exactly tuned to the concept of publishing nonsense simply because it comes from a government source ... one might hope that such a convergence leads on to the amplification of intelligence, rather than mere herd behavior, and lifts humanity to a new level of reasoning.

Wow, almost as content-free and buzzword-driven as Jon! Care to tell us something we don't know?

Easy! No Goatse.cx posts!

Add the occasional AllYourBase, and viola! Instant Karma!

Time for a new .sig

I guess my next .sig will be:

Karma: Excellent (Mostly the result of successful online reputation management)

interesting description of /. in the article

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 /. is this, then?

Re:interesting description of /. in the article

On Slashdot one has to read the original article, and think, or at least wade through the posts.

I find it amusing that reading the psots is given as an alternative to thinking.

Hogwash

If anybody was truly concerned about their online reputation, slashdot would have no posts.

Re:Hogwash

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).

Most People Have Nothing To Say

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.

Hey, /. gets mentioned!

From the article, down toward the bottom...

To form an opinion based on reading ... Slashdot takes a lot more work than soaking up a newspaper headline or drooling in front of the six o'clock news.... [O]ne has to read the original article, and think, or at least wade through the posts.

You have to read the article and think? Who knew?

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...

Slashdot Commits Unicide

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.

Ack!

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. *snip* On Slashdot one has to read the original article, and think, or at least wade through the posts.

Wait, I should *read* the article first, and *not* form an opinion based upon the article title? WTH? I've being doing it wrong!

What about EBay or BizRate's rating systems?

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).

My momma done tol' me

I'd get a "reputation."

I guess she was right. Drat.

KFG

Name Borrowing

Adding to the confusion, of course, there are the similar sounding names like the schizophrenic multiple "Bruce Perens" here on Slashdot, that can easily confuse the ingenue:)

Another project for Google Labs....

WebQuotes for individuals. You search about a company or some person name and find what is talked by him or about him.

An internet-wide Karma system could be useful also.

I almost fell asleep reading that

Uggg!! I don't know if anyone else had the same problem, but holy crap. I thought it was going to drone on and on. The story reads like a Attention Deficit Syndrome version of the Bible.

In the beginning there was light. And the light was good.

Then God said words, words, words...

What was I talking about again??

Oh yeah, the seas and crap.

her bio says she has background in coding, marketing, foreign affairs, but says nothing about interesting writing.

But then of course I could be the one with ADS. or whatever. I don't think a lot of people on the net care if their reputaion is bad or not, as long as they make thier money.

read and think?

On Slashdot one has to read the original article, and think...

Nicholas Carroll must be from bizarro world ;)

Example:

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.

Is it legal?

So anyone could post bad info about me, as long as it's not slander. Competing job applicants could thwat my chances of being hired, or make me out as wrong for the job. Scary!

Ender's Game

In this book Orson Card shows (in early 1985) about building some sort of online reputation, so well that it helped one (special) children to be the world leader (not read the later books, so here ends for me what happened about this).

I don't think that kind of thigs would work in the actual internet... is too broad, and mostly moderated by the community. Also there is no "central" place where all interesting things happens . Google is near that, but the way you use it is very specific and user driven. And Slashdot, well, is news for nerds.

Oil Tankers? Talk Radio?

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?

Scary?

Kinda. Why? Well, pretty simple. Its eaisy to skewer and out right lie online (in life too but to a lesser extent). In communities like /. or even ebay, you can skewer your moderation/seller rating and make it seem like your in the right. An uninformed opinion can be modded up here and a horrible seller can make it look like hes a good seller.

Also, post count is used sometimes to deem how popular or right someone is. I could flame all day, have thousands of IBTL posts, and other various ways to boost postcount on a board thus making it look like I have been around forever and that my word should be taken as face value. Not a real problem on smaller or non-commercial boards but on a site that offers some kind of service for pay, this is an issue.

Another issue with online, one person can destroy a business. Getting multiple log ins/ips to register bogus complaints againt a company is easy. Some people even write scripts to do this. The issue here is say you goto buy something from an online vendor and check out their seller rating and its 2.3. Would you buy from them? Proably not. Too bad that horrible rating may have come from one guy who either got a bad deal or could even be a competitor.

What am I saying here? Take all of the things that make someone or some company good or bad with a grain of salt. Do your own research instead of just relying on one source or someones post count.

Who determines your reputation.

Unfortunately a reputation is not as much made by what you post but by how people respond.

For example I have the reputation of "a microsoft shill" or for the simple people "stupid". I have this reputation in spite of the fact that I use and like *nix products and often advocate using *nix depending on the task. My reputation came about when I started to question some of the assumptions and comments made by others. These assumptions and comments were "popular" and usually followed any discussion that included MS. By questioning the popular I became a "shill".

It strikes me as funny that in a community of "non-comformists" you can be ostracized for not conforming.

Recently I have been rebuked by some people for my opinion that Hakon Wium Lie's testing methodology and following conclusions about MS targeting opera 7 were incorrect. It was popular to say that MS is evil and it must all somehow be a conspiracy. Commentary continues to be that I am a MS apologist or mistaken, even though noone can disprove the facts I've presented.

So recently I asked the question "how does one turn the tide of public opinion". I mean if I'm labeled a MS shill because I believe (not in Microsoft but) in telling the truth. Then how do I keep telling the truth in such a way that I keep clear of the MS shill reputation? Or can I? Should I just keep quiet when anyone who is mistaken or repeats a lie about large unpopular companies.

Re:Who determines your reputation.

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.

Building reputation.

I'm annoyed by Slashdot's reputation system.

While I understand this is a company, they must safeguard themselves against terrorists blah blah blah, I get real upset when someone posts "Maybe" and gets 1 or 2 automatic points.

This is one of the main reasons I *don't* register. I want my posts to have value by themselves (have you got +5 funny as AC? it's a bliss).

But, by default, we get to read the -1 crap or the +1 from the registered folks. It's all or nothing.

I always have to choose Threshold 0 and nested and reload the entire thing. Sux!

But then there are those +2 posts worth nothing from those guys who got karma to burn.

Heck! I don't know, but could it be that some registered people post BS just to get a +1?

Online Rep same as "Local Rep" w/ BBB ....

An online reputation is basically the same as a Better Busiiness Bureau Report. Both are udderly useless and immensely important at the same time.

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.

I Was Pissed When I Posted That

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.

AHAHAHAHAHA

...(of Why Unicode Won't Work On The Internet fame)...

In other words, a complete and utter moron.

Seriously, after that Unicode article of his, anyone who knows anything about i18n can tell you this fellow is an idiot who does not do his research, and doesn't understand the things he does research. Just ignore him.

They mention /.'s Moderation system!

Hey- check out the quote: ... to Slashdot.org's highly-evolved Meta Moderation system.

wait, 'highly-evolved'?

Sounds like the work of an Online reputation manager!

screw the article - that is a freaky desktop

At the top of the article is an image of a laptop open, and the desktop image is a huge head of a woman on the desktop of the laptop.
Were I a serial killer that decapitated my victims and then froze the heads for later perusal and admirement (is that even a word) - then I'd totally have that picture as my desktop background.

as a whole, the article raises some good points, but there were also parts that I disagreed with on many points - hell, the broad sweeping mention that the airline industry on the web was doomed from the start and then listing the reason as no face to face contact? fuck that, I disagree.

but this post isn't about my disagreement, it is about the scary blue head.

fear the head.

Web links that offer help sorting out accusations.

What web links are there where some people might try sorting out matters of reputation?...

For example, law students' practicing the related skills of mediation or arbitration at
http://pon.harvard.edu [harvard.edu]

Spammers

>>I am overlooking email spammers here, since they have no reputation other than pond scum, and probably never will. Not that they care - for any given product or service, they make their money on the 0.00001% of the target audience that does not despise them

I've always thought that spammers posessed the reputation of Cow Shit or perhaps a rabid dripping Goat's Penis. Pond scum seems too mild a term.

peerfear

I find this site to be on the forefront of reputation technologies: PeerFear.org [peerfear.org]

Reputation, and all that

Much to my amusement, Carroll cites my Downside.com [downside.com] as "one of the more sober contrarian sites". The system there was predicting which dot-coms would fail, and when, with painful accuracy. That site got quite a bit of attention. Now it's used mostly by people who like its data mining system for SEC filings. (Type a company name into the search box and see what happens.)

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.

What's an 'information architect?'

The author is an 'information architect' with Hastings Research. I'm not sufficiently hip to know what that means.

Unicode bull

Argh! Why does Slashdot keep on linking to that bullshit Unicode article? The Unicode charset has over 1 million characters, and has room for more. It doesn't matter if you use 8 or 16 bit Unicode, it still has over one million chars. Lots of other slasdoters have posted this fact, but the Slashdot crew seems to be unable to pick up on this fact!

Re:did you hear...

I've heard of them. So have my parents. Their reputation is stellar amidst my parents' friends. If you read the article,

Many of these reputation managers involve rating methods, from Epinions.com's Web of Trust, to eBay's ratings (and huge anti-fraud department), to Slashdot.org's highly-evolved Meta Moderation system.

These seem important to devotees of those web sites, and techies in particular are entranced by voting schemes. However, compared to the vast readership of a reputation manager like the Associated Press, with tens of millions of readers, or newscaster Paul Harvey, with enormous credibility and over 10 million devoted listeners, they are but a drop in the bucket, promising though they may be.

You see, sirs, you don't count. All of you taken together, even given your collective ability to cripple almost any site on the net, don't count.

For the humor challenged, :P

Re:YOUR CODE SUCKS!!!

This is more in reference to this post (and other trolls) and the massive pile of useless websites / companies.
Contrary to common sense some just don't care about reputation.
Or is that, "pretend they don't care so hard that they start to believe it"??

Re:Privacy is overrated

If government data mining were to be implemented ala Homeland Security then everyone is in the crosshairs for more potential damage than a silly bunch of fanatics holding a grudge because their children prefer bikinis and McDonalds more than their abusive orthodox religious beliefs. For instance, your AC status could be violated and your accounts audited on the basis of the word hijackers in your post - talk about reputation, who wants to be on a terrorist watch list?