(2004-07-19) Manifesto Reputation Society

A Manifesto for the Reputation Society. Reputation Management. Being human, each of us has many limitations: time, access, ability, and experience. The main goal of developing enhanced reputation filters is to do as much as possible despite our individual limitations - to cooperatively pierce the veils of deception, mediocrity, and banality... Reputation is Context-specific... Since there is no absolute objective reputation quantity stamped on people's foreheads, measurable proxies are necessary, such as book sales rankings, citations in academic papers, Web site visits, and readership of blogs... Reputation is a surrogate - a partial reflection (Model) representing our "best educated guess" of the underlying true state of affairs. Active evaluation by looking behind surface signals can corroborate or disprove reputations, while indiscriminate use degrades their reliability. The challenge is to encourage active evaluation, but also to use it efficiently since it will always be in limited supply.