Reputations in Online and Offline Environments

Let’s consider reputations for a moment, in both online and offline environments, and ponder the following:

• Are good reputations necessary? Rewarded?
• How are reputations established?
• How does reciprocity fit into the cycle?
• What are the benefits of having a good reputation?
• Are people honest when talking about others?
• Should censorship be allowed?

It’s probably pretty safe to say that no one wants a bad reputation, whether online or offline. In general, I think people want to be trusted, to have a solid reputation, to encourage cooperation and experience synergy. While reading the articles this week, I thought about my own online experiences with reputation, specifically on eBay (didn’t you love Resnick’s definition of eBay, a “vast electronic garage sale”?), and my offline experiences, specifically when selecting professors.

How are online reputations established? On eBay, both buyers and sellers are given the opportunity to rate their experience as positive, negative, or neutral, and then that reputation follows that person as long as they keep the same pseudonym. Assuming that past behavior is the best indication of future behavior, both parties can benefit or suffer negative consequences depending upon their reputation. Newcomers are typically distrusted until they “prove” themselves.

How are offline reputations determined? You can look up a professors’ scores from evaluations (for instance, USU’s stats are located here). However, often students learn about others’ experiences with professors by word of mouth. Students tend to talk to one another about who is lenient, who is fun, who is knowledgeable, etc. This is similar to an online environment, we learn from others’ experiences. But how do we get people to supply this feedback so people can utilize others’ experiences?

Eliciting Feedback

Eliciting feedback is a tricky business – whether online or offline. Why do eBay buyers take the extra time to offer their feedback? To offer gratitude or revenge? Are only the extreme experiences shared? In both online and offline environments, people have the opportunity to share their experiences. After completing a transaction, both buyers and sellers have the option of leaving information about their counterpart. I’m pretty sure that with my first eBay purchase I didn’t leave any feedback. I just didn’t realize what the whole thing was all about. However, as I’ve become more experienced as a consumer, I realize the value of leaving information about sellers in particular and appreciate the positive feedback I’ve experienced as a buyer.

Why do students fill out class evaluation forms? Do they fill them out? My brother is currently working on his MBA from the University of Utah. To facilitate student evaluations, they have put a rather clever system into practice. Students fill out their evaluations online, outside of class time, and then they can access their grades earlier than possible if they don’t complete course evaluations. This is a great example of reciprocity.

Benefits

“Conceptually, we should expect reputations to affect not just rates of cooperation, but also the price of goods in these markets. If these reputation systems do in fact provide useful information and in an incentive to behave in a trustworthy manner, buyers should be willing to pay more for a good it if comes from a highly rated seller, at least when the transaction involves significant risk” (Kollock, 1999, p. 14). Earlier this year I was interested in purchasing a set of Living Scriptures DVDs. At the time I was ready to start actively pursuing this purchase, there were two sets with very similar descriptions. However, the reputations of the sellers were very different. I chose to bid on the set from seller with a substantially more solid reputation and probably paid a bit more for that added assurance that the transaction would go well, backing up Resnick’s claim that “with clear reputation markers, low quality sellers receive lower prices, leaving a healthier market with a variety of prices and service qualities” (p 3).

Honesty

Honesty can be challenging in both environments. Students may be upset with the professor throughout the course and the evaluation may be a way to “get even.” Similar things can happen in an online environment – friends can rate one another high to inflate their reputations. Sometimes negative feedback can be inappropriately used as a leveraging tool.

Censorship

In setting up a formal environment for leaving feedback, it is important to consider censorship. What type of censorship should be available in online and offline environments? As I looked at the various scores for professors at USU, particularly those in the IT department, I felt the scores were only a small piece of the puzzle. I would like to see comments written about professors, but this option is currently not available. And would this even be fair? To both former students and the professors? And what about the manpower to facilitate such a change? Of course, if we adopted the U of U’s method and conducted these online, the manpower to put the comments up wouldn’t be an issue. However, would I be more intimidated to post comments because the world could see or would I be more motivated because someone besides the professor (who we only hope read the suggestion section) might actually benefit from our experiences?

And who gets to post comments? Kollock brings up that fact that at eBay, only those that have completed a transaction are allowed to post. What if as a potential consumer, you notice something that isn’t quite right? There is no way to leave feedback under these circumstances. In a course evaluation, only students that have completed the course get to leave feedback. So what about those students that dropped? I’m not recommending a change, just an interesting observation.

When looking at the relationships between cooperation, incentives, reputations, and trust in both online and offline environments, it is important to look at feedback, how it will be elicited, the benefits of doing so, the poster's level of honesty and to determine whether or not to allow censorship.

Fan Fiction

I found quite a few stories I enjoyed from various authors writing fan fiction for the television show, Judging Amy. Three are listed below:

1. K. Steinart
2. JTBJAB
3. ShastenRothe

And here is a link to a short piece I wrote in the same area.

• My story

It was very interesting to spend some time looking over fanfiction.com, especially in conjunction with Rebecca Black’s article. The authors’ profiles I reviewed did not provide any links to their personal homepages or websites as compared to the participants Black analyzed within the Cardcaptor.com community. I observed other interesting occurrences while browsing within this community. For instance, there is lingo specific to this community. Authors use the term BRAMY to indicate they are fans of Bruce and Amy, two of the more defined characters on Judging Amy. Also, there is a lot of interaction between the core community authors.

Black also reported in her article that there is a strong emphasis on peer review, constructive criticism, and collaboration. People within this community help one another with their writing, offer constructive criticism, and provide a great opportunity to gain valuable insights from others familiar with this specific genre. Of the three authors I reviewed, two were high school age and the other did not disclose that information. It is interesting to see the diversity of all the authors that contribute to Judging Amy fanfiction -- and to see what information they provide about themselves. One of my favorite quotes from a users' profile, "Bios are irrelevant." Regardless of what personal information users provide in their profiles, this is a great opportunity to find other authors with similar interests and get their unbiased opinions.

Black also reports that flaming is discouraged. As I posted comments to fanfiction.com, the disclaimer stated, “It is extremely helpful to use this opportunity to comment on an aspect of the story that can be improved. A well rounded critique is often the most rewarding tool for the writer.” This statement really sets the tone of responses expected within this community. As I was sharing my thoughts with other authors, I wanted to provide encouragement as well as offer suggestions for improvement.

Why is fan fiction so popular? I think one of the main reasons fan fiction is so popular is because authors don’t have to create or develop characters – that is already done. I also think authors like to share their work in an area that is supportive; I had a completely different experience here than I did with USENET. Authors enjoy sharing their work with those that have similar interests and can quickly and easily provide accurate feedback. It was apparent as I was reading these pieces that the authors knew the characters well. In most of the pieces, I could hear Tyne Daly’s inflection in my head as I read her dialog as Maxine.

How can these factors be harnessed to improve formal instructional uses of technology? I couldn’t help but think about my own mother as a retired Junior High School English teacher. She would certainly be excited about the students being excited about writing. It wouldn’t matter to her how this excitement came about, she would just be happy they were writing. I think it would be easy to see what kids were posting and what feedback they were receiving. If it is adequate, then why not use this forum to encourage kids to write?

Edublogging

I looked at the following five blogs this week:

1. Anne Davis
2. Jeremy Hiebert
3. Brian Lamb
4. Elizabeth Lane Lawley
5. D’Arcy Norman

Probably the most exciting topic that I stumbled across was posted by both Brian and D’Arcy. Brian initially shared a version of Flickr’s usage of tags (see my entry for October 1, 2004) and I quickly saw a way to incorporate a similar method for working with metadata within digital libraries. The possibilities are endless. I also enjoyed reading personal information on the above blogs – it gives the posters a sense of identity. (Interesting side note – my mother was visiting last week and ABSOLUTELY did not want a picture of her or her grandchildren, my boys, on the Internet.) It is interesting to see how different generations embrace or fight technology.

Educational use of technology is definitely interesting and plausible. A few of the blogs I read this week shared great ideas and suggested ways that blog in particular could be used in the classroom. Anne has a GREAT list as does Stephen Downes. Incorporating technology in the classroom affords students one more option to learn how things work. Particularly in the area of science, students can do so much more if they have technology in the classroom. For instance, remember the good old frog dissection days? The lab coats and smell of formaldehyde? I still think this is an experience everyone should have, but what about virtually dissecting the frog first? If the budget doesn’t allow 250 students to each personally dissect their own frog, isn’t this virtual dissection better than nothing? There has been a tremendous effort to create digital learning objects and to catalog them in digital libraries. I strongly believe these enhance students’ educational experiences.

Logged hours: 5 hours

Spiderman, spiderman, doing the things... only a spider can!

Spiderman, spiderman, doing the things... only a spider can!
Originally uploaded by NeonDeonne.

Just testing to see how easily flickr can post a photo to a blog. :)

Blogging: Part the First :)

Reflections on Blog Culture:
It was quite interesting to select and follow various blogs this week. I did a little searching for blogs with similar interests / backgrounds to my own, blogs posted by people I know personally, and blogs I remember from past explorations. I specifically remembered reading a blog, Culture Cat, about a year ago: The writer is a fellow PhD student with interests in blogging and enjoys Diana Krall’s music. Seems like a stellar individual, right? So, I spent time delving into her blog. I also spent some time looking at Trey Martindale’s blog as well as Brian Lamb’s blog (both guys presented at the IT Institute). I found a couple of random blogs by just poking around… College Student and Marine’s Wife.

I enjoyed the posting by Megnut and her descriptions of blogs, that blogs range from being a “personal diary, concerned with boyfriend problems” to the more traditional “weblogs-are-links-plus-commentary” definition. The blogs I followed were at both extremes and in the middle. College Student rambled about her crushes on her TA and scholastic challenges, i.e., "Calculus is going to kill me.” At the other extreme, Brian Lamb links to a lot of outside resources and shares scholastic implications.

Social Interactions:
It was interesting to follow the social interactions that occur and analyze the differences based on blogging environments. For instance, LiveJournal provides a seamless option to add friends and join / form communities with similar interests. By looking at a user’s profile in the LiveJournal's blogland, you can quickly see that Marine’s Wife has 22 interests groups, 11 friends, and belongs to 3 communities. By clicking on any of these links, you can find others who share interests with Marine's Wife, details about her friends, and see conversations within her communities of practice.

Social interactions also happen in blogs outside of LiveJournal. Brian Lamb has done a great job including links to other blogs and often this is reciprocated. If I had ten hours to spare, I’d probably spend it looking around Brian’s blog – WOW! He has amazing and timely postings. For instance, Following the Man of the Crowd begins tomorrow in downtown Manhattan. For detailed information, you’ll have to follow this link. It sounds like such a, to borrow Brian’s term, “groovy” experiment. Also on Brian’s blog, I saw great way to visualize metadata in flickr. The bigger the link, the more popular the tag.

And here is a ingenious use of flickr tags. Click through the image to see potential implications. :)

Organization:
I really enjoyed Culture Cat and her blog. The inclusion of categories made it easy to find similar entries within her blog. For instance, if I enjoyed her political commentary, I simply click on Politics, and I find every entry she has coded with this tag. Brian’s blog also included categories which is a common practice of advanced bloggers.

Another interesting thing about advanced bloggers is their ability to incorporate three dimensional effects to their entries. For example, in one of Culture Cat’s entries, she shares details about a "Prom" party she attended last Saturday. So, she uploads a picture of her in the dress from 1994 and another picture of her in the same dress last week. Culture Cat also uploaded a picture of note her friend left her ... . This was a great way to bring a artistic flaire to her blog.

In conclusion, I think novice bloggers may use blogs as an online journal and perhaps begin to establish social connections with other bloggers. Advanced bloggers establish categories or their postings, provide links to other urls, upload pictures, and establish communities of practice with bloggers with similar interests.

Logged hours: 6 hours total, 1 hour each day for 6 days this week (Sun-Fri) reading blogs.