Building Web Reputation Systems- P19: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 . | 147 Interesting M Email J Comment 48 Save Other Answers 8 Add to pnvate Watchllit Save to Yahool Bookmarks S9 Add lo My Yahoo Bang two big pots together. Use a big Add to 1 week ago EJRSS Tim 210 ci i 54 CJ p Report Abuse Figure 9-1. By giving users a simple private Watchlist the Answers designers responded to the needs of Abuse Reporters who wanted to check back in on bad content. See Chapter 10 for an in-depth case study on a more comprehensive project to not only keep bad content on Answers subdued but actually clean it up and remove it altogether with much greater accuracy and speed. Tuning for Behavior There are many useful sources for reputation input but source stands out among all others the user. The vast majority of content on the Web is user-generated and user feedback generates the reputation that powers the Web. Even every search engine is built on evaluations in the form of links provided not by algorithms but by people. In an effort to optimize all of this people-powered value reputation systems have come to play a large part in creating incentives for user behavior participation points top contributor awards etc. Users then respond to these incentives changing their behavior which then requires the reputation systems to be tuned to optimize newer and more sophisticated behavior including adjustments for undesirable side effects aka abuse . The cycle then repeats if you re lucky. Emergent effects and emergent defects It s quite possible that even during the beta period of your deployment you re noticing some strange effects starting to take hold. Perhaps content items are rising in the ranks that don t entirely somehow. Or maybe you re noticing a predominance of a certain kind of content at the expense of other types. What you re seeing is the character of your community shaking itself out finding its edges and defining itself. Tread carefully before deciding how and if to intervene. Check out Delicious s Popular Bookmarks
