Reputation Business

11 Dec 2005

Jozef Vyskoč reported(SK) today on an incident in china, where a police detained a man that stole and sold "short" IM numbers.

This looks ridiculous at first, but it is in fact a "reputation theft". The shorter IM numbers hints that a user was on-line in the early days of serivce and that may give him some kind of "reputation". This may be seen as a isolated incident, but it is not the first time I've about this kind of "inherent" reputation. A friend of mine told me that Switzerland citizens strive for car registration plates that have smallest numbers on them. The low numbers mean that the owner of the plate is long-time citizen and thus should be honored. This goes even further, as the most interesting plates are sold and bought.

There are several thoughts that came to my mind:

• In the lack of other reputation system, the people are using the mechanisms that are at hand. Like short IM numbers or low car registration plate numbers. Could this mean that there is a real need for a reputation system? That people needs it? That they even want it?
• The low numbers on Switzerland car registration plates originaly indicated an old-time citizen. But now, as the plates are being sold and bouth using market-derived prices they indicate a different value. The value shown by the figures on the plate is the mix of the time that the person lives in the city and the price that he is willing to pay for the illusion that he is honorable. The low numbers are not assigned anymore, they can only be bought. After some time this measuring system will mutate to show only the amount of money one is willing to pay for the plate. Does this mean that the reputation metrics in reputation system may have variable meaning over time? In such a case we will need some meta-reputation system that will assert the reputation of reputation systems. Or is there some different way?
• For a reputation system, one must always account for a "short-cut" value of the system. I mean, that every system may be breached, (almost) every person can be corrupted, everything has its price. There may be ways how to aquire reputation with money alone. One can get a reputation of a sound expert only by paying the "short-cut" price of the system (the price to break it, the price to buy a reputation of existing expert, etc). This may (or may not) destroy the system. As with other systems, we must know where the limits of reputation systems are and do not push the "honorability" of a reputation system beyond these limits.