Electronic reputation systems

Internet reputation systems are fascinating technologies. They employ an ancient artefact of mankind to enforce social order based on traditional social remedies such as word of mouth and chatty talk (Dunbar, 1998)to regulate a variety of digitally networked environments in absence of central authority. Reputation appeared online as soon as the Internet became context for social interaction: the more the diffusion of the Net transferred online social problems once limited to the brick and mortar world, the more new flavours of that ancient artefact arose, shaped to fit in online settings to perform a distributed regulation role. First came electronic markets: the earliest widespread setting to feature an ad-hoc designed “reputation” technology was the eBay feedback forum, developed in 1996 by Pierre Omidyar (Li, AbsTRACT