Talk:Reputation management
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[edit] Discussion
I've just spent the last 6 hours expanding this article, and I'm willing to bet it won't stand 6 minutes before Somebody edits it. That's as it should be, but I hope those edits won't be made merely to protect the golden calf.
Reputation and mechanisms to manage it are not peculiar to online communities. People do not stop being people when they get online; an online community is not really very different from a nation, a city, a town, a tribe, or a bunch of people waiting for a haircut. Personal reputation and group reputation cannot really be managed in exceptionally novel ways -- I don't say it is inappropriate to do so; merely an impossibility: there is nothing new under the sun. Many systems have been tried, and most should be mentioned here.
Part of my bias, if that means anything at all, is that WP should not move towards a point-based, formal reputation or grading system of articles, edits, or WP members, ala Slashdot or E2. I do think we need to work to repair our reputation management system, but we need to keep that system as open as possible, and not let it become the focus itself of controversy or attention. I actually hope for less formal procedure that we have at present, replacing some hard security with soft security.
If some external links seem questionable or off-topic, please read them carefully. Articles that seem to go over the related question of the reputation of WP as a whole sometimes discuss the issue of individual members' reputations.
I'm going to omit any defense of the material itself; it has flaws and needs much more work. More references should be added to social dynamics studies in the Real World, studies that focus on how members' reputations are managed in various societies. The descriptions of other online communities' models need to be expanded.
This is not, nor should be, a detailed analysis of WP's shortcomings; nor should it be a whitewash. WP should be described in the same terms as, and compared with, other communities with reputation management systems -- which is to say, every other society of humans, and perhaps of any animal capable of forming any society at all, right down to the ants.
I hope WP's description will not be cut by some officious person denigrating it as self-reference. Edit, yes; whitewash, no. To discuss reputation management within online communities at all, but to omit reference to WP, is to be coy at best, and secretive at worst. We, as a project, will gain no good reputation within the larger community of thinking people if we pretend we ourselves are above examination. — Xiong
talk 15:38, 2005 Apr 10 (UTC)
As usual, my skills at the crystal ball are pitiful; nearly a week has gone by without an edit to this substantial page. I do think it can be improved. — Xiong熊talk 22:58, 2005 Apr 16 (UTC)
