Alex Kirtland — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 19:18:18 GMT

Thanks for all these great comments, observations, questions, and recommendations for reading. We most certainly didn’t cover all aspects of rating and reputation systems, nor went as deep as we would have liked. There is the whole psychological aspect of rating that we didn’t address that’s very important, particularly that people are influenced by ratings they’ve just made (if I rate something a 5 I’m more likely to rate the next thing I see a 5), and how others rate that thing.

The story of eBay’s rating system doesn’t seem to have been documented very well anywhere, but it pretty fascinating, especially in trying to solve the practice of defensive rating.

Rating in a social environment is also something that deserves more attention. A good place to start might be here: http://www.slideshare.net/soldierant/designing-your-reput…

One thing that we avoided (on purpose) was how the information design of the rating system should look (5 stars, grades, etc etc etc). It’s a good discussion, but we wanted to focus only on the risk side of rating and reputation systems. Perhaps that’s another article ….

~alex

Boxes and Arrows: Comments by Alex Kirtland