For our final project, my group (which consists of myself, Tyce, Danny, and David) decided to investigate the different structures of reputation economies online, and their social and legal implications. You can check out our website here:
1 comments
May 10, 2009 — Dan Spector
This was really neat! It has been interesting to see how some of the reputation economies you discussed have adapted and evolved. eBay recently removed the ability of sellers to leave negative feedback for buyers since buyers could previously face negative repercussions (to their feedback score) if they gave less-than-favorable feedback to a seller, thus stifling the provision of helpful, honest feedback. In response to the trend of people selling very inexpensive digital items (like ebooks) as feedback boosters, eBay created a new category for digital items and the feedback given for such items does not contribute to one’s overall eBay feedback rating.
I also came across an article on Amazon’s review system (http://www.uie.com/articles/magicbehindamazon/z) discussing how, by asking, “Was this review helpful to you?”, Amazon is able to display the most helpful reviews first and reduce the impact of reviews that may have been written by a product’s creator/author or friend and do not accurately evaluate the product in question.