question about reputation

[Joseph M. Reagle Jr.]

At 03:32 PM 9/10/95 -0700, Wei Dai wrote:

>For example, Alice starts a anonymous consulting service, and announces 
>that she will answer the first ten queries for free.  Upon hearing this, 
>Mallet immediately starts another consulting service, and announces the 
>same offer.  At this point Mallet can simply forward his customers' 
>queries to Alice and Alice's answers back to his customers.  Thus, he gains 
>reputation at no cost.

        As a response to this example.  I'd argue Mallet has less of a
reputation because:
        (1) if this example applies to the first 10 questions from each
person, Alice will answer many more questions that Mallet.  (Mallet answers
10 and is done.)
        (2) if this example means the first 10 questions from anywhere
Mallet than has to arrange to have his customer's 10 questions in the queue
and ready to go before any other person can get in the queue, which is some
work.
        
        In general, I'd think reputation is akin to brand name to a degree.
Differentiation!  So, if Alice notices people tracking her "reputation
advertising" she can change it.  Reputation might not be as static a concept
as we think (as others have mentioned by bringing up arbitrage.)

-------------------------
Regards,                   
Joseph M. Reagle Jr.     http://farnsworth.mit.edu/~reagle/home.html
reagle at mit.edu           0C 69 D4 E8 F2 70 24 33  B4 5E 5E EC 35 E6 FB 88