Formalizing a Grammar for Reputation in Peer-to-Peer Communication

Trust between communicating peers is increasingly catching the attention of the research community. Several methods have been proposed to assist the task of establishing trust between communicating peers; all of which make use of reputation mechanisms. We find that in present literature, reputation is incorrectly defined, as some chief aspects of reputation are not considered while defining it. We propose a definition of reputation and substantiate it. Additionally, we find that in present literature, a classification of reputation does not exist. In this paper, we present a three dimensional classification of reputation for peer-to-peer communication. We validate our classification for reputation by drawing from the existing proposed trust models. We also show that the different types of reputation along the three dimensions are interrelated and cannot be treated in isolation. Finally, we propose a grammar for representing reputation along with its syntax.