designing your reputation system

Designing your reputation system (in 15 10! easy steps)

Bryce [email protected]

IA Summit 2008Miami, Florida

mailto:[email protected]?subject=IA%20Summit

mailto:[email protected]?subject=IA%20Summit

DESIGNING YOUR REPUTATION SYSTEM IN 15 EASY STEPS

1. First, let’s define our terms

2. Then we’ll review a number of common reputation patterns

3. Finally, I’ll pose a number of questions designed to assist you in employing these patterns properly.

What will we cover?

With 15 questions, I may be over-reaching. But once I’d submitted the talk title to the Summit, I felt committed!

Though some questions will be given a highly-abbreviated treatment, the set really does represent every issue I think you’d have to deal with when designing a reputation system.

I will try to publish a complete and annotated version of the questions online after the summit.


• Interaction design lead for Yahoo! Reputation Platform

• Consulted with ~10 different Yahoo! properties over 14 months‣ To varying degrees. With mixed results

• Benefited from user-testing of concepts

What’s my reputation?

[Ask if anyone would like a little but of clarity around what a ‘platform’ is…]

I won’t be discussing the platform specifically—these are best practices derived from working with customers. In fact, I am not actively working on the platform anymore, so—for me—this material serves as a nice capstone to a year’s efforts.

Tho’ I’ll show examples from various Y! properties, not all of them utilize the platform. (In fact, most don’t.) So please don’t mistake this talk for a generalization about “The Yahoo way” of thinking about reputation. It’s -a- yahoo way.

[Warn the audience that you’ll use the term ‘property’ alot, and probably interchangeably with Product, Site and Community.]

I’ll attempt to summarize findings from user-testing, but confidentiality prevents me from citing specific examples, or giving user-quotes.


Also, great thanks to…

• Yvonne French Product Manager for Reputation Platform

• Randy Farmer Community Strategy Analyst (Hire Randy!)

• Anne Binhack & Beverly Tseng Freeman User Researchers (Y! Answers & Community, respectively)

• Various other folks from Yahoo! Answers, Sports, Buzz, Message Boards, EU Community, …

http://www.fudco.com/habitat/archives/000070.html

http://www.fudco.com/habitat/archives/000070.html


Your reputation in a community is equal to the sum of your past actions—whether good or bad—within that community.

“Good” or “bad” is subjective and determined by the community itself. What the community values is good—what it abhors is bad.

Reputation

I’m really hoping to avoid a “Webster’s Dictionary definition” slide, so I’ll just give you my own coarse way of thinking about reputations…


Reputation systems attempt to mediate and automate this process: to take note of a community-member’s actions; assess the community’s reaction to them; and keep a running tally of the history of these actions.

Reputation Systems

Optionally, the system may show this reputation to its possessor. Or back to the community at large.

‣ Not strictly incentive systems‣ Not reputation management

• Focused on People reputation, tho’ the same principles easily apply to content reputation

• Digg

• Google/Pagerank

[Discuss Amazon—Top 100 Reviewers.]Joshua Porter: “Is Harriet Klausner for real?” Avg. of 7 books a day!http://bokardo.com/archives/is-harriet-klausner-for-real/

[Xbox Live]Several different reputation indicators: appropriate for a gaming community.

[starwars.yahoo.com]An -aggressive- attempt to bring gaming elements to a content-driven community

[Ebay]•Points-based reputation, number of transactions. Plus some reciprocal peer testimonials.•Ebay has been doing significant work in revamping reputation over the last 1 or two years. I’ve failed to keep up with all of the changes, myself. (But worth a re-look.)


developer.yahoo.com/ypatterns/

[Plug Design Pattern Library — Reputation Patterns being released soon. Perhaps as soon as next week. … Christian?]


1

2

3

4

5

Newbie

Listener

Enthusiast

Trendsetter

Fanatic

OR

NUMBERED

NAMED

Levels

Numbered: A family of reputations on a progressive continuum. Each level that is achieved is higher than the one before it. Levels are referred to by their number,which makes comparisons between levels very straightforward and easy-to-do.

Named: A family of reputations on a progressive continuum. Each level that is achieved is higher than the one before it. Levels are given unique names, which can give them a fun and approachable quality. Quick comparisons between levels, however, become slightly more difficult.

Numbered: Yahoo Answers. Easy comparisons.

Named: phpBB. Tho’ they don’t look like it, yes those are reputations. Fun! but… wha?


Helpful

Elite Official

Identifying Labels

A family (one or more) of reputations that are not sequential in nature. Each reputation is crafted to identify and reward particular behaviors or qualities within a community. Identifying labels are helpful for consumers in identifying more-experienced contributors who possess these qualities. (eg, 'Helpful' guides, or 'Elite' reviewers.) Identifying Labels are not particularly useful for comparing one reputation-holder to another.

Yelp: Elite Status

Get Satisfaction: Employee --> Official Rep. --> Admin. There’s a validation process, requiring an email address w/requested company to start.[Note that we’ll talk about externally-validated processes as reputation Inputs later.]


180

10

1,103

Points

A cumulative count of the number of points that a user has earned within a community. The points generally come from performing one of a number of activities on the property.

Do not confuse points with spendable currency, btw.


TOP

10

TOP

50

TOP

100

Top ‘X’

Contributors are grouped, numerically, into 'buckets' of performance, and top performers are acknowledged for their superior achievements. Top 10, 50 and 100 are some commonly-used groupings.

Amazon and Yahoo! Shopping: Amazon is kind of the canonical example. Y! Shopping? lesser known.


Collectible Achievements

Provide some boon, or reward to users for attaining certain goals within the community. Make them a consistent family, or program, of collectibles. Enhance their fun appeal by: fetishizing them in some way—develop attractive trophies, icons or 'gamepieces' to represent each achievement; allow users to save them and put them on display; provide a healthy mix of difficulties—make some achievements very easy and quick (low-hanging fruit) while others require time and effort to conquer; unlock new achievements as easier ones are accomplished.

Y! Fantasy Sports: a fun and consistent set of collectibles. (Even a ‘case’ to keep them in.)

Yahoo! Starwars: Nicely fetishistic, but they ‘break character’ with the universe. Also… ALWAYS MAKE THOSE ITEMS CLICKABLE. They should pay-off to a explanation of what they are. (Related: Question 7.)


1

Ranking (or ‘Leaderboards’)

Users' performance is tracked in some empirical and granular fashion (most typically points) in order to compare them against one another. Users accrue reputation by rising in the ranks, which necessarily comes at the expense of other users in the community. User rankings are displayed in Leaderboards.


Temporal Awards

Users are rewarded or acknowledged for their contributions over a specific timeframe, or interval. Weekly- , Monthly- or Yearly Awards are common examples. These reputations, once earned, are never lost; they're useful both for heaping praise upon consistent top performers and for giving a wider number of users the opportunity to earn a reputation. Temporal Awards may also be used to award 'keepsake' reputations for special events or promotions.


Statistical Evidence

Statistics about a user's participation or history in the community are displayed. No attempt is made to aggregate or abstract the statistics into higher-order patterns: rather, readers can decide for themselves the value of that user's contributions. Statistical evidence may also be used to validate another reputation pattern (eg. to provide justification for why someone has earned a Gold Medal.)


Peer Testimonials

Members of the community are provided a mechanism to speak to the qualities of other members. Typically, -positive- testimonials are encouraged (often enforced by allowing the recipient the right to -approve- submitted testimonials before they are made publicly available. Often, peer testimonials are designed to encourage reciprocity.


User-to-User Awards

Similar to Collectible Achievements. The significant difference is that these are peer-granted (and not ‘officiated’ through any broker.) Therefore, they’ll typically be more light-hearted fare, and probably not based on inputs reflecting Quality.

Yahoo’s BravoNation is a really simple, fun peer-to-peer Award granting product.


Thank You!

So… there you have it! Talk’s done!

Of course, that’s not true… what we’ve looked at is a laundry list of reputation patterns, but no guidance on which one to use in what situation… so…


1. What are your Business Goals?


1. What are your Business Goals?

• Drive user engagement? (However you define that.)

• Promote a specific feature?

• Acknowledge top contributors?

• Increase content quality?

• Promote user retention?

Engagement — establish and measure an enduring relationship w/users. As simple as ‘time spent on site’ or as deep as “the number of comments left on posts not authored by ‘Friends’”. For more interesting ideas on which metrics to follow: http://www.horsepigcow.com/2007/10/03/metrics-for-healthy-communities/

Promote a feature – eg. a Top Reviewer’s Badge to encourage review-writing. (But think about how the system will have continued relevancy as initial goals are met, too.)

Top Contributors — tread carefully, though. You’re just as likely to turn top contributors off if you don’t consider their other motivations. (See Question 3!) Also be aware: effect on those who aren’t acknowledged.

Increase content quality by highlighting top-quality contributors or their contributions. You’re really increasing the perception of quality, which will hopefully influence the submission of higher-quality content. (The virtuous circle.) Don’t PUNISH low-quality content. Just let it lie unnoticed.

Promote user retention, such as in…


Reputation to build loyalty

• Spectrum

• Statistical Evidence

• Tenure

• Collectible Achievements• Temporal Awards

Fantasy Sports employs a number of Reputation Indicators. These promote loyalty from season to season because the cost of switching to another provider is high: lose your hard-won standing and have to start again from scratch.

BUT…

There’s room for improvement. Reputations are temporal (per season) and each new season, the rep-holder begins again at ‘level n00b.’

[How might the reputation system reward long-time, engaged and SUCCESSFUL players and managers?]


2. What Community Spirit do you want to encourage?


Caring Collaborative Cordial Competitive Combative

Members are motivated by helping other members—giving advice, solace or comfort.

Member goals are largely shared ones. Members work together to achieve those goals.

Members have their own intrinsic motivations, but these goals need not conflict with other members' goals.

Members share the same goals, but must compete against each other to achieve them.

Members share opposing goals: in order for one member to achieve these goals, others must necessarily be denied their own.

The Competitive Spectrum

“Competitiveness” is but one facet of a Community’s spirit, but it’s probably the most compelling one to consider.

This scale is intended to be subjective. You can find many examples that will break this model (and where you place an example on the spectrum will probably differ from where I would.) But it’s a good starting point for discussion.

[Briefly walk through each stage in the spectrum]


Caring Collaborative Cordial Competitive Combative

•Support Groups

•A LiveJournal blog

•Yahoo! Health Expert Blogs

•Wikipedia

•Dating Sites

•Ebay

•Yahoo! Answers

•Message Boards

•YouTube

•Fantasy Sports

•Casual Gaming

•Halo on XBox Live

•Hot or Not

Examples

Danah Boyd has published some good stuff on the value of LiveJournal community for at-risk teens.

You may take issue with where I’ve placed some of these along the spectrum. (Dating sites and Ebay, for instance—was your first inclination to say ‘but those are competitive!! You’re competing with others on those sites!)

[Point out that the consumers of these reputations, however, aren’t competing w/the rep-holders. They’re trying to find a good partner/match/someone they can trust. The goal is a successful collaboration!]

[Mention Ben Brown’s lessons from Consumating: http://benbrown.com/says/category/chickenwiremommy/ ]

http://health.yahoo.com/experts/





Use Reputation to…

Identify senior community members of good standing, so that others can find them for advice and guidance.

Identify community members with a proven track-record of being trustworthy partners.

Show a member's history of participation, that others may get a general sense for their interests, identity and values.

Show a member's level of accomplishment, that others may acknowledge (and admire) their level of performance.

Show a member's history of accomplishments, including other members' victories and defeats against them. Use reputation to establish bragging rights.

The Competitive Spectrum


3. What motivates your community members?


• Your answer had better not be: The Incentive System

• Also — don’t rely on altruism alone

• Motivations will vary according to context, so it’s best to research your own community

3. What motivates your community members?

Earlier, I mentioned that we prefer to think in terms of Reputation, not Incentive. If you find yourself saying things like “Our users will do this because they want the points (or… the medals, the cash incentive, etc.)” that’s a red flag. You will be motivating the worst contributors (the extrinsically-motivated) to have the loudest voice in the community.

Randy Farmer is fond of saying: “If your incentive system is users’ only incentive, then you’re SCREWED.”


Why do people write reviews?

We brought 10 people (active contributors to various online communities) into the lab to compare and contrast ~16 different ways of expressing reputation.

Mark H

21, MaleSan Jose, CA (USA)

View ProfileFunny! (12 votes)

128x128p

x

Stacey S

29, Female

New York, NY (USA)

View Profile

Level 1 Reviewer

13 reviews w

ritten •

2 "Helpful" v

otes

128x128px

Adam T

38, Male

Iowa City, IA (USA)

View Profile

83 points (Level 1)

13 reviews written • 2 "Helpful" votes

Brett W

27, MaleChicago, IL (USA)

View Profile

Bronze reviewer23 reviews written • 14 "Helpful" votes

Gregory B45, MaleColumbus (USA)View Profile

Reviews Hotshot!23 reviews written • 14 "Helpful" votes

128x128px

Teresa B46, FemaleQuincy, KY (USA)View Profile

Top 10 Reviewer

423 reviews written • 851 "Helpful" votes

T OP

10


We learned their preferences, but…

We also learned what motivates them to participate in the first place.

Self-Interest Interest in OthersInterest in the Object Being

Rated

Have a voice

Practice a craft

Chronicle life experiences

Be seen in a favorable light

Express yourself

Help Others

Share a unique perspective

Feel connected to others

Entertain Others

“Fill a void”

“Set the record straight” (or dissenting opinion)

Reward the Business

Punish the Business

(All thanks and credit to Beverly Tseng Freeman)


Yelp does a good job

Reputations earned on Yelp include: 1st Reviewer (“Fill a Void”); Useful, Funny and Cool (Be Seen in a Favorable Light, Entertain Others, Help Others)

Yelp has an extensive reputation system, with many reputations seemingly tailored to acknowledge this wide range of motivations for writing reviews. It’s possible to be many different kinds of ‘Yelper’ (funny, or helpful, or a pioneer) and still feel appreciated. The quality of submissions to Yelp reflects this: some are funny, some are quirky, some well-written and some are very autobiographical. All can be rewarded for their own peculiar qualities.

Note, too, that Yelp! does -not- feature easy user-to-user comparisons. No leaderboards.


4. Which entities will accrue reputation?


• People?

• Things?

• Collections of things?

Or all of these?


Today’s talk is focused on People Reputation, but the exact same principles apply to Digg or Reddit, or ‘Honors’ badges on YouTube. And — as you’ll see — it’s impossible to discuss a person’s reputation without managing and tracking the reputation of the artifacts that they author.

So let’s dissect, a bit, how this might work…

“Jedi Master”


The same principles apply for people and ‘content’

Bob is our actor. The little blue guy represents “Content” of any type: a video, a blog entry, a comment on someone else’s blog, or even just a bookmark that I’ve saved.

We’ll focus on Bob’s story, but we won’t get very far before we have to consider the other guy too...

10


Bob joins your community

He has some amount of karma, by simple virtue of joining. (‘Firsts’ are good milestones to reward!)

NOTE: Bob should never, ever again fall -below- this karma level. (The incentive would be too great at that point to abandon his identity and start over.)

POSTS BLOG

ENTRY

+4

POSTS A

VIDEO

+1

LEAVES A

COMMENT

+2ANSWERS

A QUESTION

+3

WRITES A

REVIEW

+4

24


He starts to participate

Bob starts slow… leaves a comment on someone’s blog … then he posts a video of himself dancing to Soulja Boy… etc, etc. Soon, Bob is that engaged community contributor that we all hope for and actively using all the features that our community has to offer.

Why are different activities weighted differently? Could be a number of things: the effort involved to produce the artifact; your business priorities (see Question 1); could be based on an economic model, where demand w/in a context determines an objects ‘value.’

BUT… plan on changing these weightings over time. Don’t lock your design into any constants.

86

READ 200TIMES

-10

FLAGGEDINAPPROPRIATE!

+6

THUMBEDUP

+20VOTED BESTANSWER!

+6

10 HELPFULVOTES

+40


The community responds

[Walk quickly through the various responses… note that Bob probably should have worn pants in his dancing video ;-) … Also point out that these events are INPUTS]

These responses could take the form of atomic, singular events (a vote is cast, a button is clicked) or they could only apply once some aggregate milestone is reached.

And—again—the karmic value of each event is weighted by you, the designer in consideration of your business goals, community goals and the questions that we’ll be discussing today.

And that’s roughly how Bob’s reputation is generated. (Pending the rest of our questions, of course…)


Rate the thing, not the person

At Yahoo! we try not to allow the community to rate Bob directly.

•Keeps the focus on his works, not the quality of his character

•Discourages ad-hominem attacks

•Even positive-only votes can be manipulated

Other communities may feel differently about this: HOT or NOT for example is entirely based around rating others.

“Positive-only” votes offer only compliments, but these too should be directed at things, not people. (Nice article! instead of ‘You’re Cute’… less creepy.) There are other ways to abuse these too (Discussed in Question 14.)


And the things those people create…


✓People

✓Videos

✓Blog posts

✓Bookmarks

✓Article submissions

✓Collections

✓Playlists

✓Message board posts

✓Reviews

✓ “Social Objects”

So back to our original question… for -your- property, which entities should accrue reputation? We’ll assume that you DO want users to have reputation (the point of this talk, after all…)

Everything else depends on the offerings for your property, and the types of reputation that you want to promote.


Message Board entities

Really we care about a contributor and her posts in this example. But there may be a very limited application of thread reputation to pay attention to: perhaps we’re interested in creating a ‘Conversation Starter’ reputation so we want to calculate thread reputation -only- for threads that she has initiated.

So… entities may be conditional.


5. Which inputs should you pay attention to?


1. Perform an audit of your property.

2. List all the actions that a user can take.

3. Note the ones that—in some way—make a value statement about the entities that you’ve defined (in the last question.)

5. Which inputs should you pay attention to?

We do so love our audits, don’t we?

When listing actions, look beyond the surface: atomic actions that are readily apparent from scanning the UI — these are important, too! Record them. But also think about non-obvious actions, like: Reading an entry; bookmarking something.

Inputs will be constrained by what your application is instrumented to record.


Consider YouTube…

This is but a partial listing of all the potential ways you could make value judgements about a video on YouTube.

How many views does it have? How many times viewed all the way through? How frequently is it shared/favorited or flagged?

Ratings provide an Explicit indicator of Quality — most of the others indicate Interest alone. Quality is -implied-.


Typical ‘Message Board’ Inputs

Action Affects… Indicates…

Start new thread Thread Activity

Reply to a PostPost Interest (Implicit)

Person Activity

Rate a post Post Quality (Explicit)

Forward to a friend Post Quality (Implicit)

Read post Post ??? (Implicit)

Click on ‘More’ to expand post Post Interest (Implicit)

Flag as abusive Post Quality (Explicit)

Block user Person Quality (Implicit)

“Quote” post in Reply Post Interest (Implicit)

This is an amalgamation of several different Message Board-type products. (Not modeled specifically after Y! Msg Boards.)

The “Affected Entity” is the one -most directly- affected by the action. Other entities may be affected as well but these will be accounted for as reputations “Roll Up” to their parent entities.

Note a couple of things: • actions can directly affect more than one entity (eg. Reply to a Post)• We’ve already said we don’t like to directly rate people — how to account for ‘Block user’ action?


• Pick indicators of Quality, not simple Activity

• Pick events that are hard for one user to replicate w/ease. (But anticipate collusion anyway.)

• Explicit inputs are good, but tempt gaming.

• In competitive contexts, performance-based inputs are good as well.‣ eg. Winning a match, winning a season

‣ Hard to fake. You can’t argue with results!

Good Inputs

‣ Bob’s video is rated 5 stars? High reward.

‣ Bob posts a video? Low (or no) reward


Beware of Ambiguity

Original design on the left, improved one on the right.

Problems: • not entirely clear what semantic meaning users associated w/’Starring’ something. A vote of quality? Or just a way to Bookmark the question to review later?• Proximity to ‘Report Abuse’ (the flag) - also lack of labels, etc.

Fix:• labels aided in clarity• introduce a ‘private Watchlist’ that’s more appropriate for bookmarking purposes.• separate Abuse-reporting out as something different. Remove it from the social tools area.


6. How exclusive should earned reputations be?

We did not get to discuss this question during the IA Summit. Slide left here for completeness’ sake.


7. How transparent should the rules be?

Should you reveal -a little- about how the System works? Or a lot?

Why, or why not?


Highly Specific

— From Yahoo! Answers Point System

http://answers.yahoo.com/info/scoring_system

http://answers.yahoo.com/info/scoring_system


Fuzzier

“The exact formula that determines medal-achievement will not be made public (and is subject to change) but, in general, it may be influenced by the following factors: community response to your messages (how highly others rate your messages); the amount of (quality) contributions that you make to the boards; and how often and accurately you rate others messages.”

— From Yahoo! UK Message Boards

Some models are fuzzier-yet! Flickr’s “Interestingness” algorithm, famously, is a complete black box. (But.. you can probably imagine the mix of inputs that determine it, to some degree.)

http://help.yahoo.com/l/uk/yahoo/messages/reputation/medalsearned.html

http://help.yahoo.com/l/uk/yahoo/messages/reputation/medalsearned.html


Neither approach is “best.” But be aware…

The more specific the set of rules that you present, the greater they’ll influence the community’s behavior.

7. How transparent should the rules be?

Of course, we’re not talking about -all- the members of your community, but…

If simple, rote repetitive actions count toward Reputation accrual, then that’s what (some) users will do. Highly-specific rules give them easy access to comparisons and ‘what-if’ scenarios.

So your system of carefully weighted-and-balanced inputs may be for naught, because in the time I could edit and post a video (for 50 karma points) I could just as easily give star-ratings to 200 blog-entries (for 1 apiece.)


Thanks for the points!

On Yahoo! Answers, one of the most effective strategies for accumulating points is to simply answer a lotta, lotta questions. Even though the reward is small (2 points), it is a reproducible action with generous rate-limits. (That get more generous as your level advances.)

The gaming community has a name for this: they call it Grinding.

As you can imagine, folks who are answering questions just to accumulate rep don’t always have the most interesting contributions to make…


8. Should reputations decay from non-use?

“Decay” — degrade in value. Different things can cause a reputation to decay:• the passage of time. (Not ‘using’ an account frequently enough, or for a very long time.)• continued abuses


Yes!

“Accumulators are bad.”

— Randy Farmer


It’s good practice to bequeath strong reputations to folks who are -active- in the community. If, for whatever reason, their activity wanes, then—given enough time—their reputation should wane as well.


If you don’t decay reputations…

• Permanent ‘log-jam’ at the top of leaderboards • Noobies will leave, discouraged• Community will appear stagnant


But remember! Don’t permit a user’s reputation to decay -beyond- the level of an absolute beginner. They will ditch their account and start over.

There are some possible alternatives to decaying reputations, as well. For instance, orient leaderboards around ‘Daily-’ or ‘Weekly Movers’ rather than overall standings. etc.


9. Are there cultural aspects that you should consider?

I’m only giving this question the barest of consideration, only because I haven’t had a whole lot of experience integrating Reputation w/international locales, different cultures, etc. (Mostly US domestic & one big project for the UK audience.)

But think of culture not just across national/geographic boundaries, but also… • Corporate culture, if your application is for enterprise market


•Perhaps your community members are not prone to boasting?

•Organizational/legal prohibitions against making certain claims?‣ eg. ‘Health Expert’

9. Are there cultural aspects that you should consider?

Note: “Expert” is a hot-button title, almost regardless of the context. Approach w/caution! (Poor user acceptance in studies, ambiguity, legal concerns, etc.)


10. How visible will reputations be on your site?



11. For what contexts will users accrue reputation?


11. For what contexts will users accrue reputation?

“She was a damn good dancer but she wasn’t all that great of a girlfriend.”

— The Hold Steady

Reputation takes place within a context, and people are multi-faceted. You can excel in one area, fail in another and be generally lackluster in most everything else.

When designing a reputation system, you’ve got to take these contexts into account…


This is Bob, again. He’s a frequent Yahoo! contributor.

MESSAGE BOARDS

MUSIC

ANSWERS


Top 100 DJ

Level 12

… within a couple of different contexts. His popular playlists on Y! Music have made him a top 100 DJ. He’s an active contributor to Answers. He’s earned (visible) Reputation in both of those areas…

… so… why no reputation in Message Boards?

Because the context is all wrong. It’s too BROAD. What does it -mean- to be a ‘good message board contributor.’ That’s almost as ineffectual as rewarding Bob for being a ‘Good Speller.’ HOWEVER…

MESSAGE BOARDS

MUSIC

ANSWERS


Top 100 DJ

Level 12

CHELSEAUK > SPORTS > FOOTBALL

GOLD MEDALCONTRIBUTOR

Music and Answers are somewhat -general- contexts, while the Gold Medal badge earned on the ‘Chelsea’ message board is very specific. Its intended to identify Chelsea fans when interacting on that board: to counter trash-talking Manchester United fans who might want to visit and stir things up. For more, see: http://soldierant.net/archives/2007/10/shipped_one.html


•Be as specific as necessary, but still general enough to apply widely‣ ‘Top Reviewer in Electronics’ is helpful and

applicable to a wide audience

‣ ‘Top Reviewer’ may be too broad

‣ ‘Top Reviewer for Philips Electronics’ is probably too narrow, doesn’t aid in cross-brand comparisons

Contexts should generally…

Of course, it all depends on the wider context. If your entire SITE is dedicated to the Philips brand, that may be a fine contextual scope. (Balance Consumer Interest/Business Considerations/Desired Community effect.)

SHOPPING

MUSIC

ANSWERS

L E D ZEPPE L I N

L E D ZEPPE L I N

Top 100 DJ

Level 12

L E D ZEPPE L I N


SHOPPING

MUSIC

ANSWERS

L E D ZEPPE L I N

L E D ZEPPE L I N

Top 100 DJ

Level 12

L E D ZEPPE L I N

#1 Zep Fan!

Just a fun example showing how reputations from different contexts may be related, and can be ‘rolled up’ into a cross-context reputation.


12. What additional benefit will users derive?



13. What presentation pattern is appropriate?


Competition and Comparison

Appropriateness of Comparing People

Competitiveness

Identifying Labels Named LevelsStatistical Evidence, Top ‘X’ Groupings

Points & Numbered Levels

Ranking & Leaderboards


14. How can the system be subverted or “gamed”?



15. How can we tell if our rep. program is successful?



?Thank You!

Okay… we really are done now.

Any questions?

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