Reputation/Trust

1. David and Pinch discuss the "6 degrees of reputation" using Amazon.com's review system as a model. Within their article they discussthe usefulness of the review system, problems they've uncovered, some users' experiences, and even drill-down to talk about why people post reviews in the first place. I found the various perspectives of the article intriguing, and it also made me reflect why I typically don't write reviews on Amazon but am perfectly willing to on other sites.

Here's my view: Amazon is to huge and unweildy to form real community. Sure there are message boards and reviews, but it covers so many products and so many people respond that I've never seen any use in it. I've found that I prefer to post other places with a much more defined (and much smaller, though still large) audience such as DVDTalk.com or CruiseCritic.com.

Given the affordances mentioned by the authors to opining online, the real question is, what signals to you that reviews/opinions have merit? The tiered system is in place, but even that must be assimilated by the user into action. For me, it comes down to patterns action. If many people say that a certain dvd player is slow to load or breaks down after a few months, I may weigh that more heavily than single complaints. Store suggestions and professional reviews are also considered because they have more to lose with a misleading reviews.

2. I think that the conclusion about Yhprum’s Law in the Resnick, Zeckhauser, Swanson, and Lockwood manuscript about eBay is fairly spot on ... eBay ratings systems can fairly simply be rigged or used maliciously, but the system tends to work decently well. Does this demonstrate that at little assurance is enough for most people to "get over" the idea of shopping/bidding online? Is a listing fee and a little bit of oversight enough to scare away most scams? I think it would be interesting to compare eBay with a free service like Craigslist which, at least according to reputation, is a haven for scam-artists and items not available on eBay such as illegal substances, prostitution, etc.