Business Reputation Systems

In organization with no departments, no leaders, and no position titles, a system is needed to help members assess each other's knowledge, expertise, and roles in the organization. I believe that an effective reputation system can meet these needs.

A reputation system is a system that measures a person's 'reputation' in way that can be viewed and assessed by those who have never actually met the person. An example of a successful reputation system is the eBay feedback system. The system is simple, and contains both a quantitative and qualitative element. The quantitative element is a positive, neutral, or negative (scored 1, 0, -1 respectively) rating for each transaction. The sum of a user's past ratings is representated as a score. The qualitative element is represented by comments made by other users. The scores and comments are available to all other users to view. So, without meeting the person, and without meeting someone who has met the person, you can make an assessment about the reputation of the person.

In a Blog Cooperative, the reputation system could be closely tied to the liquid democracy-based voting system. Several elements of the voting system could be used to measure the reputation of each member. Proxies can be used a measure of 'trust'. If a member is being entrusted with many proxies from other members, it demonstrates that other members trust that person to vote on their behalf. Viewing proxy total over time is also relevant to a member's reputation. A sudden decrease in proxies received might be indicative of a poor decision or a vote that other members did not agree with. Proxy totals are also a good measure of expertise level. When proxy totals are show on an expertise or 'category' level, the result is an expertise-based reputation level or score. This can show that some members have a good reputation with Engineering voting, a mediocre reputation in Marketing, and a low reputation in Customer Service. This reflects both reputation and area of expertise. A qualitative aspect of the repuation system could be the member's voting record, in a similar way that a politician's voting record forms part of their reputation. Voting records should be retained indefinitely, accessible to all members.

While voting-based aspects to the reputation system are important, other elements will be needed to form a comprehensive picture of member reputation. Another important area includes the completion of work and accomplishments. Like all businesses, some members will do more work than others, and some will have greater accomplishments and successes than others. Accordingly, the reputation system should take into account the work effort and accomplishments of members. One method for doing so, would be a peer review or rating system in which other members rate other members on their accomplishements. This could be time-based (weekly, monthly, etc.) or project-based.