Reconsidering online reputation systems

Social and socioeconomic interactions and transactions often require trust. In digital spaces, the main approach to facilitating trust has effectively been to try to reduce or even remove the need for it through the implementation of reputation systems. These generate metrics based on digital data such as ratings and reviews submitted by users, interaction histories, and so on, that are intended to label individuals as more or less reliable or trustworthy in a particular interaction context. We suggest that conventional approaches to the design of such systems are rooted in a capitalist, competitive paradigm, relying on methodological individualism, and that the reputation technologies themselves thus embody and enact this paradigm in whatever space they operate in. We question whether the politics, ethics and philosophy that contribute to this paradigm align with those of some of the contexts in which reputation systems are now being used, and suggest that alternative approaches to the establishment of trust and reputation in digital spaces need to be considered for alternative contexts

Systematizing Decentralization and Privacy: Lessons from 15 Years of Research and Deployments

Decentralized systems are a subset of distributed systems where multiple authorities control different components and no authority is fully trusted by all. This implies that any component in a decentralized system is potentially adversarial. We revise fifteen years of research on decentralization and privacy, and provide an overview of key systems, as well as key insights for designers of future systems. We show that decentralized designs can enhance privacy, integrity, and availability but also require careful trade-offs in terms of system complexity, properties provided, and degree of decentralization. These trade-offs need to be understood and navigated by designers. We argue that a combination of insights from cryptography, distributed systems, and mechanism design, aligned with the development of adequate incentives, are necessary to build scalable and successful privacy-preserving decentralized systems

The Miracle of Peer Review and Development in Science: An Agent-Based Model

It is not easy to rationalize how peer review, as the current grassroots of science, can work based on voluntary contributions of reviewers. There is no rationale to write impartial and thorough evaluations. Consequently, there is no risk in submitting low-quality work by authors. As a result, scientists face a social dilemma: if everyone acts according to his or her own self-interest, low scientific quality is produced. Still, in practice, reviewers as well as authors invest high effort in reviews and submissions. We examine how the increased relevance of public good benefits (journal impact factor), the editorial policy of handling incoming reviews, and the acceptance decisions that take into account reputational information can help the evolution of high-quality contributions from authors. High effort from the side of reviewers is problematic even if authors cooperate: reviewers are still best off by producing low-quality reviews, which does not hinder scientific development, just adds random noise and unnecessary costs to it. We show with agent-based simulations that tacit agreements between authors that are based on reciprocity might decrease these costs, but does not result in superior scientific quality. Our study underlines why certain self-emerged current practices, such as the increased importance of journal metrics, the reputation-based selection of reviewers, and the reputation bias in acceptance work efficiently for scientific development. Our results find no answers, however, how the system of peer review with impartial and thorough evaluations could be sustainable jointly with rapid scientific development.Comment: Submitted to Scientometric

How to Create an Innovation Accelerator

Too many policy failures are fundamentally failures of knowledge. This has become particularly apparent during the recent financial and economic crisis, which is questioning the validity of mainstream scholarly paradigms. We propose to pursue a multi-disciplinary approach and to establish new institutional settings which remove or reduce obstacles impeding efficient knowledge creation. We provided suggestions on (i) how to modernize and improve the academic publication system, and (ii) how to support scientific coordination, communication, and co-creation in large-scale multi-disciplinary projects. Both constitute important elements of what we envision to be a novel ICT infrastructure called "Innovation Accelerator" or "Knowledge Accelerator".Comment: 32 pages, Visioneer White Paper, see http://www.visioneer.ethz.c

Efficiency and Nash Equilibria in a Scrip System for P2P Networks

A model of providing service in a P2P network is analyzed. It is shown that by adding a scrip system, a mechanism that admits a reasonable Nash equilibrium that reduces free riding can be obtained. The effect of varying the total amount of money (scrip) in the system on efficiency (i.e., social welfare) is analyzed, and it is shown that by maintaining the appropriate ratio between the total amount of money and the number of agents, efficiency is maximized. The work has implications for many online systems, not only P2P networks but also a wide variety of online forums for which scrip systems are popular, but formal analyses have been lacking

The Relationship of Fans’ Sports-Team Identification and Facebook Usage to Purchase of Team Products

Social media has become a regular direct marketing component for sports teams. This study explores the link between team identification and use of a professional sports team’s social-media channels. Questions to answer include, Does social media impact identification fans have with a team or vice versa? What does the amount of social-media use do to impact the relationship? Does this activity lead to increased sales of tickets and merchandise? Data collected by an Internet survey of fans of a professional baseball team show a positive relationship between team identification and use of the team’s Facebook page as well as to team related purchases. Implications for theorists understanding the role of social media in branding as well as implications for sports marketing are discussed