Reputation in Infosocieties

Summary

In this chapter, we examine reputation systems realised within the fertile domain of electronic communities. Reputation systems have been flourishing in recent years, and have been employed with interesting results in several domains, the most famous being auction intermediaries. Given their size, electronic communities undoubtedly represent the greatest storehouse available for reputation data, even if the laws of competition make firms sometimes reluctant to transfer these data to researchers. The analysis of these data is not yet massive; there is probably a lot of knowledge hidden in log files and waiting to be discovered; the distance between existing implementations and research-level systems is still great. Despite the naivete of implemented systems, or perhaps because of it, a considerable room is left for theory and research-based applications.