Here's a paper/article/screed on reputation capital. A subject we discussed here a long while ago back when dinosaurs ruled the earth, etc... well, not quite that long ago. This doesn't seem to mention anything about anonymous users, however. http://www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue9_7/masum/index.html Abstract Manifesto for the Reputation Society by Hassan Masum and Yi.Cheng Zhang Information overload, challenges of evaluating quality, and the opportunity to benefit from experiences of others have spurred the development of reputation systems. Most Internet sites which mediate between large numbers of people use some form of reputation mechanism: Slashdot, eBay, ePinions, Amazon, and Google all make use of collaborative filtering, recommender systems, or shared judgements of quality. But we suggest the potential utility of reputation services is far greater, touching nearly every aspect of society. By leveraging our limited and local human judgement power with collective networked filtering, it is possible to promote an interconnected ecology of socially beneficial reputation systems . to restrain the baser side of human nature, while unleashing positive social changes and enabling the realization of ever higher goals. <SNIP> ----------------------Kaos-Keraunos-Kybernetos--------------------------- + ^ + :"I find it ironic that, on an amendment designed to protect /|\ \|/ :American democracy and our constitutional rights, the /\|/\ <--*-->:Republican leadership in the House had to rig the vote and \/|\/ /|\ :subvert the democratic process in order to prevail" \|/ + v + : -- Rep. Sanders re vote to ammend the US PATRIOT ACT. -------------------------------------- http://www.sunder.net ------------