Reputation

I have been curious to learn about sites with "currency" based on user's reputations (e.g. ebay or expert forums) since we've not yet covered this topic in depth. I found a good Trust Reputation Systems Survey presentation referenced by a Middleware class at BYU. The presentation describes how different online commercial services and expert forums compute user's reputations, and the various challenges facing such efforts. I was a little surprised to see this was part of an Internet middleware class, but on second thought it makes sense that peer-to-peer and other connected computing systems are built upon a reputation framework.

The course itself is in progress, but there are still a variety of useful references to reputation or trust-based systems on their course calendar page.