Deranged Mutant writes:
My worry is about abuse. One would prefer to save endorsements and find a way to remove thumbs-downs... also how to prevent one from overdoing a thumbs-up or -down certification for a person (either to inflate or de- flate a reputation).
A few nuisance lawsuits from people who were given thumbs-downs might do the trick, as with employment recommendations in the U.S. :[
In terms of persons, I see this more as an electronic equivalent of medals awards, or those nifty little smiley stickers my second grade teacher used to give. After a while they become meaningless.
ObTim: As in other reputation markets, some people will spread their blessings more liberally than others. They do this at the risk of diluting the worth of each credential granted. It all comes out in the wash. A reviewer named Susan Granger, for example, is known to me as a person who routinely lauds lousy movies. Thus it's simple for me to ignore her positive recommendations (I've yet to see a negative review from her). In fact, when I observe that a new film prominently features her seal of approval in its advertising, I take that fact as an indication of the lack of praise from more discriminating reviewers. So a nominal "positive" credential may be interpreted as an implicit negative credential, depending upon context. OTOH, if I only give digital thumbs-up to a couple of people on the list, those who consider me a reputable appraiser-of-cpunks should find the information relatively useful. I'm sure I can manage to be a harsher critic than your 2nd-grade teacher :} Using e.g. a single 1-10 scale would be highly practical for such purposes, IMHO. -Futplex