Web of Trust + Account Feedback

[donkeypong]

It's a good start. I might throw in the delegates also.

[luckybit]

You could take the amount of posts a person has made on Bitsharestalk and use that as criteria for earning a badge.

That's some eagle-eyed criteria. Might need an additional factor or two.

Was just a simple example of how it can be objective. Maybe people who commit code to Bitshares could get a developer badge and that would also be objective criteria.

[donkeypong]

You could take the amount of posts a person has made on Bitsharestalk and use that as criteria for earning a badge.

That's some eagle-eyed criteria. Might need an additional factor or two.

[luckybit]

After that light-hearted post I have to add this:

"Badges? We don't need no stinking badges!" 

The badge should be somehow earned rather than just handed out and it should mean something to the people who honor it.

This the very heart of my concern and why I am arguing for an objective rather than subjective rating system. If the community is going to rely on it them it should be as objective and universal as possible. How you use that objective info is up to each account holder.

One thought I'm sensing here is this can't be a  number or color. There may need to be different characteristics that each have a rating, like courtesy, communication, timeliness, volume etc. Of course that can become a rather large nightmare to devise a small but universally useful list of criteria to compile transaction stats for.

Badges are objective. How do you obtain a badge? An objective measurement. You could take the amount of posts a person has made on Bitsharestalk and use that as criteria for earning a badge.

I don't see how you can completely remove subjectivity. If I have to trust then I'm going to trust certain people more than other people based on some criteria I set.

I think for the most simple cases maybe you don't need badges but if you're trying to do a complete reputation system then you do need badges. If the goal is web of trust you need badges but if it's just an Ebay clone or Amazon clone you can do that exactly as they do it.

But if it is trust then suppose I want to trust people of a certain criteria more than other people? Suppose I want to trust community members who have a certain experience level?

I think we are onto the same idea but badges are like an object oriented way of thinking about it while you're thinking about it more as a set of rules. If people don't pass the objective measures they wouldn't have the badge in the first place so for example if a person has a 99% rating on transactions give them a badge.

It worked for the Boyscouts http://www.scouting.org/meritbadges.aspx . Why not take it digital?

[Thom]

After that light-hearted post I have to add this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TFwprS_L6tg

The badge should be somehow earned rather than just handed out and it should mean something to the people who honor it.

This the very heart of my concern and why I am arguing for an objective rather than subjective rating system. If the community is going to rely on it them it should be as objective and universal as possible. How you use that objective info is up to each account holder.

One thought I'm sensing here is this can't be a  number or color. There may need to be different characteristics that each have a rating, like courtesy, communication, timeliness, volume etc. Of course that can become a rather large nightmare to devise a small but universally useful list of criteria to compile transaction stats for.

[donkeypong]

For the record, I really like the badges idea. Just having fun here.

[luckybit]

For example, take the ebay feedback system. Participants voluntarily rate the transactions. It's up to individuals to assess those ratings and decide whether to do business with a member or not.

When you talk about icon colourization or labels or stars etc. that seems to be an assessment of how well the transactions are rated. That's where the deterministic rules should be defined and quite public.

Another consideration is the sheer number of transactions conducted. If the feedback was automatic in the form of "successful transaction" or "reversed / in dispute", "cancelled" you could simply tally those numbers to come up with a reputation score.

I suggested many months ago that we should have badges. I think we should go with badges. Using badges we can give different kinds of weights to different individuals who have the badge. The badge should be somehow earned rather than just handed out and it should mean something to the people who honor it.

This way for example if they are someone with a particular sort of expertise then maybe I would want to give more weight to their judgement. Or perhaps the badge could signify that they are part of a particular clique and I would then be able to filter according to badge so that each of the different cliques are represented in the judgement.

It's likely that there will be some honest smart people in many different cliques.

[luckybit]

Would the rules for the ratings be baked in the code (automatic) or up to participants to rate, like ebay buyers & sellers rate transactions (or not)?

My concern (if the rules for rep and rating aren't automatic and explicitly defined and stable) is that alliances can form to smear accounts. I've seen this in forum rep systems that allow for negative and positive reputation points. Nothing I can prove but when you observe posts you see trends and nothing precludes the possibility of such "rogue / troll" alliances from forming.

It can work both ways, to destroy or tear down or to bolster or build up. It needs to be automatic to avoid this being artificial.

There are going to be cliques. This is why it should be something we take into account and let people choose their circle or cliques.

I'm not going to take every post as carrying equal weight. If a completely anonymous person makes an opinion then I would want to know how honest they are. Anyone can smear anybody so it's not good enough for me to accept every comment as having equal weight.

So the people I trust the most should have the most weight. I think as long as the reputation system is flexible enough that we can sort of configure it to filter according to quality then it can be okay. So if you moderate someone down then someone else should rate whether or not you were helpful, and should be able to determine the quality of your judgement.

[Thom]

For example, take the ebay feedback system. Participants voluntarily rate the transactions. It's up to individuals to assess those ratings and decide whether to do business with a member or not.

When you talk about icon colourization or labels or stars etc. that seems to be an assessment of how well the transactions are rated. That's where the deterministic rules should be defined and quite public.

Another consideration is the sheer number of transactions conducted. If the feedback was automatic in the form of "successful transaction" or "reversed / in dispute", "cancelled" you could simply tally those numbers to come up with a reputation score.

[luckybit]

We are preparing to add some new features to help reduce fraud / errors from accounts that look like bter. 

1) You can now "burn" shares for or against an account while posting an optionally signed message on the "wall" of the account. 
2) You can now link two accounts with arbitrary meta data, ie:  the account "bytemaster" can link to "bter-com" and define various properties such as trust-level.

So now users have a way of flagging accounts for both good/bad behavior, leaving anonymous or signed messages on accounts, and build an arbitrary web-of-trust among the accounts.

These features also provide the basis of future features including:
1) Allowing Overstock to issue shares
2) Paying dividends on User Issued Assets
3) Identity authorities for voting

The purpose of this thread is to discuss these features and their implications.

Web of trust is a necessary component I think. But if people are able to flag accounts for good and/or bad behavior then we should also be able to determine if their opinions were helpful and rate that.

Not everyone's opinion will be truthful or carry the same weight. Suppose I want to take certain people's opinion as carrying more weight than others? I should be able to do this too.

The general idea is if a judgment is made then others can go and rate the quality of the judgement. In addition we want to filter it so that only people who have a history of making quality judgments are the people we trust.

[Thom]

Well that's good as the cost may encourage honesty, but it's no guarantee. You could still manipulate reputations unless it an automatic algorithm is in control.

Am I missing something with what is intended by this proposal?

[xeroc]

feedback is combined with BURNING some shares ... the more you vote .. the more btsx you will need

[Thom]

Would the rules for the ratings be baked in the code (automatic) or up to participants to rate, like ebay buyers & sellers rate transactions (or not)?

My concern (if the rules for rep and rating aren't automatic and explicitly defined and stable) is that alliances can form to smear accounts. I've seen this in forum rep systems that allow for negative and positive reputation points. Nothing I can prove but when you observe posts you see trends and nothing precludes the possibility of such "rogue / troll" alliances from forming.

It can work both ways, to destroy or tear down or to bolster or build up. It needs to be automatic to avoid this being artificial.

[kokojie]

Can you explain a bit how do you plan to avoid a user registering for example, 100 accounts, and then use them leave good feedback for his main account?

[donkeypong]

Great innovation. It will be much needed. I would suggest that there be one additional category of trust/rating. Someone who is a longterm holder of a decent quantity of BTSX and/or BitAssets, but who does not often spend them, should have a set trust level as well. Not everyone will conduct a large volume of P2P transactions. Those who do with trustworthiness should be rewarded  by the ratings at a justifiably higher level. But those who are faithful holders should not have to start with newbie-equivalent trust levels when they do make occasional transactions. Maybe they get one gold star instead of five blue ones, or something.