Drawing on Martin’s hypothetical scenerio in a previous comment, Paula’s reputation as a writer may be glowing, but she may just suck as a manager. She may be a great manager of teenage boys (she volunteers at the local community center) but terrible managing a gaggle of ladies in corporate communications (they hate her military approach). She may be a great historical novelist, but terrible at research papers.

Kim’s idea for treating it like a FICO score is something worth exploring. Context would be critical. So how would it work? Would Paula say “Rate my Management abilities”? No, in Paula’s case that rating wouldn’t really mean anything. Would she be able to say “Rate me on my ability to manage teenage boys”? She would be more inclined to offer up ratings for things she knows she’s good at and avoid those things she’s bad at. Or maybe she THINKS she’s good at managing teenage boys, but when the ratings roll in, she finds out she’s wrong. Would she be able to remove the rating?

I’m not convinced yet that this would be valuable. But I’ll keep an open mind to see how the idea develops.

This is the first time I’ve visited this blog and it’s great – very thought provoking.

Beyond that I think that relying only on my participation to date is limiting. What if I have great credentials but not much of a social reputation because I’m new to the community? Taking into account only the reptutation I’ve built in this one technical context is also limiting. Certainly you will want to take these things into account but you not taking into account who I am means you’re going to be missing potentially valuable connections.

To me the ideal would be a service that’s more like a FICO score that lets you define the attributes you want to score on and the weights you want to assign to them. It would \take into account factors such as professional designations and education, or volunteer activities, or hobbies (depending on the context) and combine these with my online reputation. And it would allow me to have multiple scores depending on who I am in a given context, rather than conflating these which I think creates confusion and poor results.

As Jeremiah also suggests, that won’t be true in every profession (yet, but give it time). But the deeper point lurking there, I think, is this: things that have monetary value tend to get exploited. This will.

@Martin: I understand what you’re saying, in my 20th century gut. But my head wonders if a citizen of the 21st might not find these worries silly. Managing all that is a lot of work, and we’ve consistently seen that our species is unwilling to invest a lot of effort in preserving their own privacy…

First, lets decide which Paula you are talking about. Inside ‘the company’, there’s Paula who is head of UAT for a given product or service, but there’s also Paula the informal - the one on the committe for the kids Christmas Party, the one who has the key to the pool table when it swallows your change and the one who knows just the right way to kick the soft drink machine. Outside work, there’s Paula the motorcyclist, Paula the WOW clan leader, Paula the daughter and sister.

Would this Paula, for example, want ALL (or even any) of those previous identities associated with her profile on a dating site ? It would be unwise to associate the dating identity with her work identity (from a physical safety perspective). She might also be nervous about SOME of her Work, WOW or biker buddies knowing as well (but there may be some she’s particularly interested in having know as well…)

Depending on whether you share the details of one identity with ALL or SOME of the contacts of another identity, you either increase the value of the second identity, OR you create a third identity.

Which of your identities has which reputation and how much ?
What, if any, crossover between these reputations do you want made public ?
What, if any, crossover between these reputations are relevant ?

What, if any, crossover between these Identities do you want made public ?
What, if any, crossover between these Identities SHOULD you make public ?
How do you trust / ensure that the owner of each of these identities keep them up to date ?
Who do you trust to manage these identities / reputations exactly as you wish (matching only as you wish, segregating as you wish) ?