Reputation Information Systems: A Reference Model

Abstract

Reputation systems are complex social systems that continually collect, aggregate, and distribute feedback about a person, an organization, a scholarly work, or some other entity, based on the assessments of others from their interactions or experiences with the entity. A reference model, or meta-specification, is presented that describes the essential functionality and behavior that embedded information systems need to provide to be effective and useful mechanisms for making reputation explicit and measurable. † The reference model, based on a multi-disciplinary understanding of reputation, is specified in the Unified Modeling Language (UML) since it is the industry-standard approach for modeling systems. The model addresses systems that focus on the reputation of individuals (personal reputation). Extensions for the reputation of corporate, not-for-profit, and governmental organizations (organizational reputation) are described in the conclusion along with challenges for future research.

On Desideratum for B2C E-Commerce Reputation Systems

“…One of them is to apply only the time window from which the transactions are taken into consideration [10] . The problem of determining the appropriate time threshold for a specific reputation calculation, however, is not well understood [21] . The other method is to use a decay function, that is assigning more weight to recent ratings than to the older ones.…”

“…1) The feedback is a vector, not a scalar value (like in eBay), reflecting other users' evaluation of different aspects of the provided service quality and consists of the following components: transaction outcome, i.e., if the product/service was received, fulfilling provider's signals [21] , e.g., if the delivery time, the product were as promised, and customer service/support.…”

“…The common way to deal with the problem of unfair ratings is to filter out the incorrect inputs [21] . Some researchers go even a step further, e.g., by proposing a punishment mechanism [22] .…”

A Computational Distributed Reputation Model for B2C E-commerce

“…In the proposed system the quality factors constitute the explicit ratings left by the user after the transaction and consist of three components: transaction outcome i.e. if the product/service was received, fulfilling provider's signals [19] e.g. if the delivery time, the product were as promised, as well as customer service/support.…”

Credit Status in China's E-commerce Market

“…Nevertheless, the problem hindering the further development of China's ecommerce is no longer logistics or payment issues, but the credit risk in transaction [2]. Many existing literatures on the credit risk in ecommerce try to improve the credit system [3] [4] [5]. Some focus on the difference between credit risks in e-commerce and that in other fields [6] [7], some focus on one specific risk in C-C [8] [9].…”