Assignment 7: Reputation System, Lisa Ji

I realize that I’m always blogging about taiko (Japanese drumming), but it’s my only organized non-academic activity and the group dynamics make it very relevant to the topic of reputation building. Our group is very similar to a sports team, where we must give large amounts of time to practice and performance, but there is less formal motivation to dedicate to the group’s effort since it is just a club, not a university-organized team. As such, the members of taiko must find their own motivation to attend meetings, go to practice, and learn new pieces on their own. However, team members cannot always find this self-motivation, and this is an area where a reputation system could be implemented.

Resnick says that “when people interact with one another over time, the history of past interactions informs them about their abilities and dispositions.” This is certainly true of any group, including taiko, but this information is hard to quantify or objectify. As in, the team does not have a base measure with which it can compare its members. A reputation system could be this baseline. In taiko, group members could earn small amounts of reputation points for daily and weekly activities such as attending practice, getting there early to set up drums, or staying a few minutes at the end to put drums away. Larger numbers of points can be awarded for less frequent events such as general body meetings. Skill can be rewarded by awarding a sum of points for each song in which a person participates in a performance, and enthusiasm can be rewarded by awarding points for attending performances even when not performing. Finally, these points would decay over time, so new members are not forever trying to catch up to older members in point totals.

With this system of point awards in place, rewards would be qualification for performance positions or executive board nominations. This would ensure that people in these positions would have both the skill and dedication to perform well. However, in any reputation system, there is the opportunity to manipulate the scheme. If a trusted member lies about his efforts at practices, or says that he attended a performance but sat away from the group when he did not actually attend, the system falls apart. Members could artificially inflate their reputations to achieve the performance or e-board qualification, yet not deserve the trust that is placed in a person appointed to these positions. Finally, there is the simple matter of getting the system started. Resnick notes that “in the offline world, capturing and distributing feedback is costly.” The extra effort of filling in your points for a day or checking other members’ points is minimal, but still difficult to overcome. These problems could be found in any reputation system, yet the scheme (if successful) could benefit taiko just as much as any community.