[squeakland] Re: the reasons for ranking

[Timothy Falconer]

On Sep 30, 2009, at 10:58 AM, voiklis wrote:

> Hello all,
>
> I apologize for joining this conversation so late; I am a longtime,  
> though recently quiet, member of the community.
>
> I understand that the ranking system is an attempt to enable people  
> to judge the quality of a contribution (or contributor) based on  
> some directly observable measure of reputation. On first sight, one  
> could argue that such a system overcomes the problem that in the  
> face-to-face world reputation is not directly observable. In order  
> to get an honest assessment of a person's reputation, one has to  
> invest a lot of time building trust with the people familiar with  
> that person. Even then, a trustworthy assessment requires direct  
> observation of the person's actions.
>
> A ranking system would appear to reduce that effort by half; knowing  
> the person's reputation among his/her peers, one only needs to  
> assess the work.
>
> The problem with that reasoning is that electronic ranking systems  
> are highly susceptible to manipulation. Building reputation becomes  
> the goal of the activity for many people and they use all sorts of  
> seemingly harmless social and technological means to inflate their  
> numbers. Our lab has been studying this phenomenon through both  
> observational studies of online communities and laboratory  
> experiments. The two papers below report on the phenomenon as it  
> presents itself in Digg, the news aggregation site.
>
> The first paper demonstrates that a tit-for-tat game of reciprocity  
> inflates the reputation of contributors and their contributions  
> without reflecting anything substantive about their contributions.  
> The second paper really brings out the negative consequences of this  
> phenomenon. The paper reports on an experiment where people judged  
> how interesting they found the contribution. The ranking values of  
> the articles were set by the investigator; sometime the rank of the  
> article was set high, at other times low. Experimental subjects  
> rated higher-ranked contributions as more interesting than lower  
> ranked contributions. The same article was rated as highly  
> interesting when its rank was set high and uninteresting when ranked  
> low. Duncan Watts (of small-world networks fame) observed the same  
> phenomenon with music rating.
>
> What this means in the present discussion is that people will likely  
> ignore low ranking contributions. Worse still, when they do actually  
> look at those contributions they are likely to see what the ranking  
> value led them to expect rather than the qualities of the  
> contribution itself.
>
> Unless we can find scientific research that demonstrates any  
> benefits to ranking, I think we should be wary of using such systems.


Thank you for your insightful response.

A few things that may make the Squeakland ranking system different  
from those you cite  . .

1) viewers don't rank, so it's not a popularity contest

2) only people with established credibility rank projects ... you've  
got to earn your say

3) ranking is limited to ten people per project

4) rankers are chosen at random, with bias to higher credibility ...  
so friends are less likely to rank each other

5) number or value of votes isn't shown anywhere, it's merely the  
position in the list

6) there are many ways to view projects (by group, by tag, by subject,  
by region) so you're much more likely to see lower ranked projects  
than in a straight sort


Anyway, these are just off the top of my head.   The benefits to the  
ranking system lie chiefly in:

1) letting people see which accounts have long-term credibility, which  
I've found useful on other sites

2) distributing the ranking effort while maintaining quality by  
favoring those with credibility

3) showing the best projects first, in a uniform & fair way, which is  
what it's all about


It's really more of a trust system than a ranking system.  It's just  
that ranking is the chief way to get trust.

Tim





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