Disqus - Friends of soldierant

Re: Are Democrats Boosting Daggett in New Jersey? -- Political Wire

xian — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 15:58:08 -0000

that's a stretch.

Re: A Case Study: Yahoo! Answers Community Moderation

frandallfarmer — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 11:09:59 -0000

Interesting. Could you elaborate? Do you mean the Junk Detector (the thing that auto-rejects ill formatted content) doesn't work as well in french? Or did you mean that the community wasn't as effective in hiding the trollish/spammish content?

Is there any chance you can give an example or two?

If the reputation model isn't working as well, I'm definitely interested in that information for the book.

Re: chapter3 [Building Web 2.0 Reputation Systems]

frandallfarmer — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 16:49:31 -0000

We'll let you know when it's posted. It's part of the final drafting process.

Re: Time Decay in Reputation Systems

frandallfarmer — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 12:56:26 -0000

I see why that happened - spell checker fu. The discussion page for "performant" on Wikipedia convinces me that this usage is weak, so I've fixed it. Thanks.

Re: chapter2 [Building Web 2.0 Reputation Systems]

frandallfarmer — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 12:45:23 -0000

Our editor liked the metaphor and found it helpful. Soon we'll have feedback from our technical readers - so we'll see.

Re: chapter2 [Building Web 2.0 Reputation Systems]

frandallfarmer — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 12:44:11 -0000

Oop! Thanks for spotting that. I fixed it both in the book source and here.

Re: The Dollhouse Mafia, or "Don't Display Negative Karma"

frandallfarmer — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 12:08:51 -0000

Interesting statement - could you expand? Do you meant that assigning any public karma somehow taints the value of any aggregate opinion? If so, I don't necessarily disagree, but I don't know of anything to support this supposition.

Re: chapter12 [Building Web 2.0 Reputation Systems]

frandallfarmer — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 19:07:39 -0000

LOL! This chapter isn't ready for review yet. :-) There'll be content at the end of the book soon - though thanks for the suggestion! We might just do something like that.

Re: The Dollhouse Mafia, or "Don't Display Negative Karma"

frandallfarmer — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 18:20:46 -0000

Wow. That's quite a thesis. The citations are fine. Thanks!

Re: The Dollhouse Mafia, or "Don't Display Negative Karma"

frandallfarmer — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 16:59:26 -0000

There wasn't a problem identifying the mafia members, given the behavior described. They're red-ringed faces were all throughout the service. :-)

Though it is true that showing all inputs into a reputation can make it's roll-up calculation more transparent - but it makes it harder to understand the aggregate score on it's own. Also, we know that one strike is NOT equal to one good action, and talk about it here: http://buildingreputation.com/doku.php?id=chapt...

Re: The Dollhouse Mafia, or "Don't Display Negative Karma"

frandallfarmer — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 16:49:52 -0000

Thanks for the pointer! I'll definitely take a look at it.

Re: The Dollhouse Mafia, or "Don't Display Negative Karma"

frandallfarmer — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 16:46:36 -0000

Ah! There's the assumption - that negative karma is the result of a mistake.

The reason that product managers ask for negative karma is not to deal with mistakes, but as an attempt to weed out "bad guys". It does the exact opposite.

Re: The Dollhouse Mafia, or "Don't Display Negative Karma"

frandallfarmer — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 13:52:40 -0000

Max,

Thanks for leaving a detailed comment!

Point 1: I still disagree. When users see a displayed reputation of 50 that is made of some unknown number of positive and negative scores, it is meaningless. This is a lesson that SlashDot.com learned early on - they turned off reputation display.

Point 2: Sure, people could offer green-hub links for any external incentive. I'm certain some people did. There are many other flaws in the green-hub reputation model in The Sims Online. I didn't design it, only critiqued it (and had to deal with the fallout, as the head of community management). The point that story makes still holds - displaying negative reputation is perilous and non-trivial.

Lastly, Bryce didn't write this story. I did - any blame due is mine, though so far you haven't said anything yet that has changed my mind. :-)

If you think this excerpt is superficial, I'd like to recommend that you read the book, even in its current draft form, online at http://buildingreputation.com/doku.php. We are actively seeking substantive feedback.

Re: The Dollhouse Mafia, or "Don't Display Negative Karma"

frandallfarmer — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 13:41:00 -0000

Thanks! I agree completely with your post (that you can't ban people, only accounts.)

Positive reputation is one of the methods applications/sites use to add user-value to accounts in order to encourage mutually beneficial behavior.

Re: The Dollhouse Mafia, or "Don't Display Negative Karma"

frandallfarmer — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 13:34:49 -0000

We think so too! We mention SlashDot's Karma system several times in the book: http://buildingreputation.com/doku.php

Re: The Dollhouse Mafia, or "Don't Display Negative Karma"

frandallfarmer — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 13:33:57 -0000

There are many possible alternate designs. And that's what the problem here is - bad design.
It is common for designers of single-user computer games to make this kind of error when creating their first multiuser system. I'm not sure if they ever changed it.

Even web of trust doesn't really help with reputation bankruptcy - where a user just abandons the account when their reputation drops below par.

Re: Are Republicans Conceding on Health Care? -- Political Wire

xian — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 18:51:22 -0000

that's what happened under LBJ too... if you can't beat 'em....

rope-a-dope, baby!

Re: The Dollhouse Mafia, or "Don't Display Negative Karma"

frandallfarmer — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 17:21:29 -0000

Lol! One can always count on a green hub connection from one's friends and family!

Re: Ratings Bias Effects

frandallfarmer — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 14:39:26 -0000

There are two different main points in your comment, Jeffery:

1) The star ratings have self-selection bias and are not randomly sampled. This is correct as far as it goes. As to the statement that almost all reputation systems use randomness, I must disagree. By definition the internet introduces self-selection bias: each system is limited to those who have computers that are hooked to the internet that are using a particular application in a particular site and who opt-in to participation. Randomness does play several useful roles, even in this context, such as is detailed in our book at http://buildingreputation.com/doku.php?id=chapt...

2) I don't see any reason to conclude that a flat distribution is always most desirable at all. People are not random. People have tastes and opinions. There is no data to suggest that taste/opinion is evenly distributed. Don't polls (that are properly randomly sampled) usually have an uneven distribution of results? Otherwise we wouldn't have so many polls. :-)

Randy

Re: August Was Not So Bad for the White House -- Political Wire

xian — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 09:54:44 -0000

Totally. I heard there were 18 million people at the rally. Were you there? I didn't see either of you.

Re: Quote of the Day -- Political Wire

xian — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 07:34:50 -0000

also very Slavic accent and having no idea how articles work in English. In soviet Russia authoritarian news channel watches you.

Re: Quote of the Day -- Political Wire

xian — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 07:29:55 -0000

that's funny. the Sunnis in Iraq thought they had a majority too.

Re: Quote of the Day -- Political Wire

xian — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 21:08:08 -0000

hardly. why empower lunatics and liars. enjoy your echo chamber.

Re: Quote of the Day -- Political Wire

xian — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 18:11:00 -0000

exactly: Obama has specifically noted that there's a network dedicated to tearing him down through misinformation. Why exactly should he facilitate that?

Re: Santorum Confirms He's Considering White House Bid -- Political Wire

xian — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 14:11:25 -0000

Bachmann-Palin Overdrive!