Building Web Reputation Systems- P17:Today’s Web is the product of over a billion hands and minds. Around the clock and around the globe, people are pumping out contributions small and large: full-length features on Vimeo, video shorts on YouTube, comments on Blogger, discussions on Yahoo! Groups, and tagged-and-titled bookmarks. User-generated content and robust crowd participation have become the hallmarks of Web . | The granddaddy of reputation-based content moderation is Slashdot and it employs this strategy to great effect. Figure 8-5 illustrates Slashdot s multiple levels of content obscurity comments below a certain score are abbreviated in a thread just enough content from the post is left peeking out to preserve context and invite those who are curious to read more. Those comments that dip below an even lower score are hidden altogether and no longer sully the reader s display. Figure 8-5. Slashdot seemingly hides more posts than it displays. It s a system that favors your rights as a discriminating information consumer over everyone else s desire to be heard. To avoid the presumption trap make these controls user-configurable. Let users choose the quality-level that they d like to see. Don t bury this setting as a user-preference. Make it evident and easily accessible right in the main information display otherwise it will probably never be discovered or changed. A bonus to keeping the control easily accessible users who want to change it frequently can do so with ease. You may be concerned that providing a quality threshold will unfairly punish new contributors or new contributions that haven t had enough exposure to the community to surpass the level of the threshold for display. Consider pairing this strategy with Inferred Reputation see the section Inferred Reputation for Content Submissions on page 210 to give those new entrants a leg up on the quality game. Expressing Dissatisfaction Remember The Gong Show It was a popular American game show in the 1970s contestants would come on and display a talent of their choosing to celebrity judges any one of whom at any point during the performance OK there were time limits but that s beside the point could strike an enormous gong to disqualify that contestant. Trust us it was great entertainment. 206 Chapter 8 Using Reputation The Good The Bad and the Ugly Today s Web has a smaller quieter and sadly less satisfying .
