[MUD-Dev] Player run reputation system

[Ola Fosheim Grøstad <olag@ifi.uio.no>]

Timothy Dang wrote:

> I must admit I'm not entirely clear on Advogato's workings. From
> what I read, it delivers a binary trust/don't trust signal for
> each node, and the signal is a raandom variable (heavily skewed
> towards the proper signal). Is this correct?

AFAIK (not much!!) it is based on a seed (trusted source) which
delegates responsibility, the further away from the seed the less
capacity you get. This might be a useful property for MUD
groups/guilds, provided that you make assignment "capacity" visible
to each node.

Did you mean random variable as in statistics? It is not based on
means, it is based on flow, bad nodes dry out if their parents can't
provide the current they need.  Was that right?

> My preference is for decentralized reputations systems, along the
> model of collaborative filtering systems such as Firefly. In such
> a system, each person would have a unique trust level for every
> other person. I would set my trust level for some people, and the
> system would automatically calculate trust settings for others to
> match those of people who trust similarly to myself. If one
> prefers a more realistc dynamic, my trust could by updated by
> trusting those who people I trust trust (ugh).

I probably should read up on trust/reputation systems (I've only
read the CACM special issue from last year), but wouldn't this be a
problem in a MUD? It would be rather unlikely that you would have
any kind of overlap at all, or does Firefly compute some kind of
closure?

And basically, players tend to express distrust, not trust, unless
you need keys to gain access to various resources; "here take the
keys to my car" or "let's team up".  So you're really looking for a
distrust network and not a trust network.  Can you model that with
simple trust metrics?  Seems that you would need to look at a lot of
variables in order to establish a decent reputation system. (How
much time do you spend being teamed up with others?  Who have you
killed?  Who have you transferred how much resources to as a gift?)

Worse, do these systems take human psychology into account? A
gullible person can be trusted not to make an evil act, but you
cannot trust his judgement of others!!  To trust the quality of a
node and the node's judgement ought to be separate issues.

Well, I know I am ignorant, so I'm happy to be educated and informed
about both network flow, trust and reputation systems. :-) Just
trying to fork some discussion.

--
Ola  -  http://www.notam.uio.no/~olagr/
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