Contributor reputation-based message boards and forums

Abstract

System and method for operating reputation-based communication or content service. Method includes obtaining metric related to first user contributor reputation; identifying communication or content having association with first user contributor; and processing communication or content to generate processed communication or content based on the obtained objective contributor reputation. Service is broadly defined and may be selected from bulletin board, message board, chat room, forum, information provision service, content delivery service, email service, information provision service, search engine service, content delivery service, communication or content screening service, communication or content screening service, or other. System for providing reputation processed based on-line communication or content. Communication or content provided or generated by the inventive system or method. Business method for operating a communications or content provision service. Computer program and computer program product stored either on a tangible media or in an electronically accessible and readable form to implement method.

Description

CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS [0001] This patent application claims the benefit of priority to U.S. Provisional Patent Application Ser. No. 60 / 722,101 filed 30 Sep. 2005 and entitled Reputation-Based Boards, which application is hereby incorporated by reference. [0002] This application also claims priority to U.S. application Ser. No. 11 / ______, filed 22 Sep. 2006 entitled Graphical Forecasting Interface, by Craig A. Kaplan and Calen Lopata, Attorney Docket No. 61117.8004. US01 and PCT / US06 / ______, filed on 22 Sep. 2006, entitled Graphical Forecasting Interface by Craig A. Kaplan and Calen Lopata, Attorney Docket No. 61117-8004 W001, which applications are hereby incorporated by reference.FIELD OF THE INVENTION [0003] This invention pertains generally to Internet, web, and network-based message boards and forums, chat rooms, email, and other forms of asynchronous and synchronous communication and more particularly to such message boards and forums, chat rooms, email and th...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

[0014] In another aspect the invention provides a computer program and computer program product stored either on a tangible media or in an electronically accessible and readable form.

Problems solved by technology

Unfortunately, the method of collaborative filtering employed by Slashdot, and by many other sites, relies on subjective judgment, after the fact.

Although somewhat useful, there are inherent inefficiencies and deficiencies in these conventional methods.

First, many people will read a posting but not everyone rates the posting.

This means that a few people with strong opinions (and possibly a single or a few people with multiple user identities or IDs) can bias the system by rating early and often.

Second, many people still have to search and / or wade through poor quality information that has limited or no quality ratings while waiting for the information to be scored by others.

Third, the “quality” of a post is very subjective.

In general, what one person may think of as being useful, another person may classify or rate as useless or junk.

Most sites do not have rigorous criteria for making objective quality ratings or even subjective quality ratings.

Even if these rigorous criteria were added, such criteria would be time consuming to learn and apply and would likely reduce user participation.

Any enforcement of the criteria would also be difficult or impossible to implement in practical terms.

A major difficulty in constructing such a system to date has been the challenge of obtaining reliable and objective information on the quality of posters or contributors.

When raters know that they too will be rated (as for example on Ebay) the “reputations” become even less reliable since people are reluctant to give poor ratings for fear they will receive negative ratings in retaliation.

Furthermore, since many posters are one-time posters or infrequent posters, it is often impossible to reliably predict even the subjective quality of posts in advance.

There simply aren't enough data points to create a reliable trend in most cases.

In the user reputation domain, we see Ebay-like subjective commentaries or evaluations (not objective reputations) that are usually inflated and not very useful (and not reliable in any event) until many data points (e.g., many transactions) have been established.

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