Reputation Systems
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.