Building Whuffie Reputation and the
Future of the Social Web Kevin Lawver | Music Intelligence Solutions Monday, November 9, 2009

A Brief History of Whuffie
• The concept was laid out in Cory Doctorow’s novel Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom • Basically, whuffie is a currency based on reputation. • Geeks were fascinated... Monday, November 9, 2009

Whuffie Explained • Whuffie is
based on your interactions with others, and your actions that benefit or hurt the community. • You can see where others’ whuffie comes from: • right-handed whuffie comes from groups you agree with. • left-handed whuffie comes from groups you don’t. Monday, November 9, 2009

How does whuffie apply to
community? • Real-world currency isn’t the currency of most online communities. • They usually do center around reputation, even if it’s not quantified • Why not calculate it and use it to recognize your best users? Monday, November 9, 2009

Today’s Communities • Most communities
on the web center around a primary social object. • That social object is the source of reputation. • Secondary, yet useful, actions aren’t rewarded. • Single-source reputations (Digg) are easily gamed. Monday, November 9, 2009

Practical Limitations • Whuffie doesn’t
travel. It’s local to the community actions happen in. • Good reputations may inform other communities, but your reputation won’t map onto a new community. • Left and Right-handed whuffie is too complex to implement today (for me anyway). Monday, November 9, 2009

Case Study: Flickr Monday, November
9, 2009

Community Actions •Taking and uploading
photos • commenting • tagging • creating galleries, sets & adding photos to groups • favoriting • geotagging Monday, November 9, 2009

Which actions get rewarded and
are encouraged? Monday, November 9, 2009

Taking pictures... Monday, November 9,
2009

and that’s it. Monday, November
9, 2009

But what would happen if
they rewarded other behavior? Monday, November 9, 2009

Rewarding Good Feedback • What
if Flickr rewarded people for posting comments? • Adding tags? • Geotagging photos? Monday, November 9, 2009

You’d get better comments, tags
and locations for photos; Monday, November 9, 2009

which would encourage photographers... Monday,
November 9, 2009

... to upload more photos...
Monday, November 9, 2009

...creating a virtuous cycle! Monday,
November 9, 2009

BuildingYour Own Reputation System Monday,
November 9, 2009

How to Build a Reputation
System • Catalogue your system’s actions. • Assign positive and negative values. • Then watch the stream and assign values to the objects and users as they “flow” by. • Reward good behavior, discourage bad. • Find and showcase your “best” content. Monday, November 9, 2009

A Sample Whuffie Chart •
Post a photo: 25 • Comment on a photo: 15 • Have a comment deleted: -10 • Tag your own photo: 5 • Tag someone else’s photo: 7 • Have your tag deleted: -3 Monday, November 9, 2009

Gaming the System • Automated
reputation based on multiple actions is harder to game than user- initiated reputation. • Think about Digg.All they have are votes. If you can infer reputation based on how the community reacts to an object, you don’t need them to vote. Monday, November 9, 2009

Rewarding Unsung Heroes • You
can look at different angles of your reputation events and reward the “best” in your community at support activities (commenting, tagging, etc). • Users feel more rewarded for behavior helpful to the community and are then more likely to continue doing it. Monday, November 9, 2009

Reputation Systems in the Wild
• All of the major e-mail services have a reputation system in place for stopping spam - but they don’t really reward good behavior. • Flickr’s Interestingness is a reputation system applied only to primary social objects. • Ficly has one, but most results aren’t surfaced yet. Monday, November 9, 2009

Warnings • Active communities produce
a lot of reputation events. Calculating reputations for everything can take a long time. • As you grow, you may need to prune actions you watch, or delay calculating reputations for older objects/actions. • Negative actions should have less impact than positive. • Beware precipitous falls or rises and cap them (if needed). Monday, November 9, 2009

The Future of Whuffie •
Someone (probably Google) will build a reputation clearing house with an open API. • The sites already gathering reputation data will open it up, scaring the hell out of the unsuspecting masses. • Someone will crack left and right-handed whuffie, giving us a much better idea of who we’re dealing with on first contact. Monday, November 9, 2009

Further Reading •Down and Out
in the Magic Kingdom by Cory Doctorow (obviously) •The Whuffie Factor by Tara Hunt Monday, November 9, 2009

Questions?
Monday, November 9, 2009

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Thank you! Monday, November 9,
2009

Contact Info • Old school:
kevin@uplaya.com • New school: @kplawver • Work: http://uplaya.com • Blog: http://lawver.net Monday, November 9, 2009