Rob Hof in his article Are online reputations portable? opens up the debate
For years, both sellers and buyers on eBay have bellyached about not being able to carry their reputations--the feedback ratings they get from each other on their transactions--to other sites. With some sellers garnering tens of thousands of positive feedbacks (AAAA+++++ fantastic five-star eBayer!!!!!!!!!), they clearly have value to a lot of folks.Or do they? ...
Interesting point. whilst I have been touring the West Coast, I have been thinking quite a bit about trust, reputation and the portability of these concepts in our digital world.
If communities are dynamic and that they flow as information and content flows, if Group Forming Networks are to play a significant part of our future. Then, our reputations, our history, must be transparent.
As communities and networks are built out of trust.
Hof notes
Context matters for reputations, but it seems to me that trust earned in one place can transfer to other places, even if that transfer entails some kind of reputation discount. The bigger question is whether services such as eBay, which has jealously guarded those feedback ratings from being used by buyers and sellers on other sites, will open up their reputation systems to be used Webwide.
Interestingly there is a company that enables World of Warcraft players to fast track earning their online reputations enabling them to speedily progress deeper into the game
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