Trust, Identity and Reputation
Do you trust everything you see on the Internet? I hope not!
The University of New Brunsvik (UNB) library offers some suggestions on “Judging What You Find”.
UNB suggest you look at Accuracy, Authority, Objectivity, Currency and Use.
Being careful is always a good idea when judging what you find. But what if you are the publisher? How do you develop your reputation?
In the Internet 2.0 world there will be thousands of small web sites, the “long tail” of sites. This blog is one of them. How do we, as publishers, develop our reputation?
Dick Hardt has suggested that Sxip’s Sxore product may be a part of the solution. By using a common login ID on many sites you can develop a reputation that follows your ID. As they say it on their site: Get a reputable peer-generated digital identity. By the way, for each of your personalities you can have a different Sxore ID.
Sxore is currently holding a private alpha test of a WordPress plugin. It’s by invitation only. For those interested, they will soon expand their alpha program.
Sxore is a two-in-one solution. While allowing you to build your reputation when you comment on others work, it can also be used to moderate comments to your own blog,
So, are we all going to end up with a digital reputation, maybe something similar to ebay’s “member reputation“?
Probably not. We already have services helping you bypass registration on sites, bugmenot.com being one of them. Privacy issues, real or perceived, will probably stop many from adopting an online identity.
Applications like Sxore will help building a reputation based on comments left on other blogs. Maybe what Sxore does is to make it easier to build a reputation. Accuracy, Authority, Objectivity, Currency and Use, the UNB’s “tags”, are still needed - with or without Sxore. If you keep these “commandments” in mind, and add consistent use of login names and e-mail addresses or web site URLs, then, when you publish anything, you’ll should be well on the way to develop a digital reputation.
I guess it boils down to being relevant, honest and consistent - in addition to present. ebay members do not earn a powerseller reputation by good products and fast shipping alone. They also need to provide a high volume of interesting items to sell.
This brings me to a side of your “online identity” that you might not think about that often - your “offline world”. To be able to develop a good online reputation you need to be able to organize your offline life such that you are able to live up to the promises , and hopefully a positive image, you have given/developed online.
roar at roarweb dot com
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