but how do you know who to add to the positive rep list? take netnews, e.g. i generally scan a group for names i know (+ rep), then read

For example, all mail/news reader software would have a function where after reading the article you could press a key to indicate you found the article useful/informative/interesting. What it would do is send the person a "certificate", which in essence says "I recommend reading messages by this person", signed cryptographically with your signature. These certificates could be appended to messages by that person, or posted to some special newsgroup just for that purpose (similar to "control"), or distributed through some other means. If several people to whom you have assigned high credibility recommend messages by a person, then your news software would automatically sort his messages to appear higher in the list before other people's messages, and also that person's recommendations would have a higher weight in computing other people's sort values. All this pre-supposes widespread use of authenticated messages, so someone could not forge himself some certificates from well-known people. Also, it would not allow a J. Random to forge a post that appears to be from a person with high reputation. The technology for such communication exists now (PGP, MD5, RSAREF, etc) it is just not integrated into most news/mail software. Unlike negative reputations, positive reputations are immune to subversion by creating many anonymous or pseudonymous identities. You might imagine someone creating two hundred "people" and have them all send him their "certificates". But this would not work, since no-one has recommended these people, their certificate would carry no weight whatsoever. -- Yanek Martinson mthvax.cs.miami.edu!safe0!yanek uunet!medexam!yanek this address preferred -->> yanek@novavax.nova.edu <<-- this address preferred Phone (305) 765-6300 daytime FAX: (305) 765-6708 1321 N 65 Way/Hollywood (305) 963-1931 evenings (305) 981-9812 Florida, 33024-5819