[OpenID] reputation

[Joaquin Miller]

Bob is right on target about the word, 'reputation'.

Whether data about a party or claimed to be about a party is true or 
not is irrelevant to reputation.
Reputation is about the opinion of some people about some other party.
The only fact that has anything to do with reputation is how a party 
is regarded.

I offer authorities, a demonstration, and an example; see below.

Please, let's not destroy another perfectly good word by giving it a 
technical meaning that is not at all its ordinary meaning.

Cordially, Joaquin


Authority:

OED: "...estimate of a person with respect to character or other 
qualities; the relative estimation or esteem in which a person or 
thing is held..."
  (Or, for those of us who are net-type-people:)
Wikipedia: "...a social evaluation..."
Wiktionary: "what somebody is known for"


Demonstration:

If Joe claims to be a doctor and is a doctor and is regarded by 
people as doctor, then (in that respect) Joe has a good reputation.
If Joe claims to be a doctor and is a doctor and is regarded by 
people as no doctor at all, then (in that respect) Joe has a bad reputation.
If Joe claims to be a doctor and is not a doctor and is regarded by 
people as a doctor, then (in that respect) Joe has a good reputation.
If Joe claims to be a doctor and is not a doctor and is regarded by 
people as no doctor at all, then (in that respect) Joe has a bad reputation.


Example:

Does it seem like there is some puzzle here?  There is not.

If a person keeps leaving blog spam, it is a fact that that person is 
a spammer.  So far we know nothing about that person's reputation.

If a site reports that that person keeps leaving blog spam, then that 
person has a bad reputation (with that site).  If a reputation 
aggregator reports that many sites report that that person keeps 
leaving blog spam, then that person has a bad reputation (with those 
sites).  If you and I and the rest of us on this list think that that 
person keeps leaving blog spam, then that person has a bad reputation 
(with us).

The fact that that person is or is not a spammer has nothing to do 
with the reputation: Quite possibly that first site is lying.  Quite 
possibly all those sites are mixing up that person with some other 
person.  Even, quite possibly, we just don't like that person and the 
messages they post, although those messages are in fact not actually 
spam, but we can't see that because we dislike that person so much.


Bob Wyman wrote:
>I would counsel folk to be careful about bundling too much into the 
>bucket of things that we think of as "reputation information." ... I 
>believe that "reputation" should really be restricted to subjective 
>statements about "behavior" or perceptions.

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.openid.net/pipermail/openid-general/attachments/20070201/83b7952d/attachment-0002.htm>