Collaborative Reputation Mechanisms for Online Communities

The members of electronic communities are often unrelated to each other, they may have never met and have no information on each other's reputation. This kind of information is vital in Electronic Commerce interactions, where the potential counterpart's reputation can be a significant factor in the negotiation strategy. I will investigate two complementary reputation mechanisms that rely on collaborative rating and personalized evaluation of the various ratings assigned to each user. While these reputation mechanisms are developed in the context of electronic commerce, I believe that they may have applicability in other types of electronic communities such as chatrooms, newsgroups, mailing lists etc. Thesis Supervisor: Dr Pattie Maes Title: Associate Professor in Media Arts and Sciences Collaborative Reputation Mechanisms for Online Communities by Giorgos Zacharia The following people have served as readers for this thesis: Thesis Reader Judith Donath Assistant Professor of Media Arts and Sciences NEC Career Development Professor of Computers and Communications MI4T Media Lab Thesis Reader Mark Glickman Assistant Professor Department of Mathematics and Statistics Boston University