User:Waynemb2/sandbox

Waynemb2

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Name	Miranda Wayne
Education and employment
Occupation	Software Engineering Intern University of Pittsburgh Medical Center
Education	Bachelors of Science in Information Science (April 2017) School of Information Sciences Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences University of Pittsburgh

My name is Miranda Wayne, I'm a senior at the University of Pittsburgh studying Information Science and Gender, Sexuality, and Women's Studies. My academic interests include Human-Computer Interaction, Front End Development, and Diversity/Inclusion in the workplace. Currently, I work as a Software Engineering Intern for the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) developing custom applications that integrate with electronic health records. In addition to my coursework and professional work, I am an active member of the Colorguard in University of Pittsburgh Varisty Marching Band. I also serve as Secretary for the Gamma Omega Chapter of Tau Beta Sigma, national honorary band sorority.

In the future I hope to find a career in which I can continue to develop professionally and academically. I'm looking to utilize all of the skills and knowledge I have gained in my undergraduate career to contribute to a company that uses technology to change the lives of people every day.

Reputation systems are programs that allow users to rate each other in online communities in order to build trust through reputation. These systems are built to predict the future of different transactions through feedback from previous customers.  Some common uses of these systems can be found on E-commerce websites such as  eBay, Amazon.com, and Easy as well as online advice communities such as Stack Overflow. These reputation systems represent a significant trend in "decision support for Internet mediated service provisions." With the popularity of online communities for shopping, advice, and exchange of other important information, reputation systems are becoming vitally important to the online experience. The idea of reputations systems is that even if the consumer can't physically try a product or service, or see the person providing information, that they can be confident in the outcome of the exchange through trust built by recommender systems.

Maintaining Effective Reputation Systems

The main function of reputation systems is to build a sense of trust within users of online communities. Much like the brick and mortar stores, the idea of trust and reputation can be built through customer feedback. Paul Resnick from the Association of Computing Machinery describes three properties that are necessary for reputations systems to operate effectively.

1. Entities that have a long lifetime and create accurate expectations of future interactions
2. Capture and distribute feedback about prior interactions
3. Use feedback to guide trust

These three entities are critically important in building and all revolve around one important element: user feedback. User feedback in reputation systems, whether it be in the form of comments, ratings, or recommendations, is a valuable piece of information. Without the presence of user feedback reputation systems are not able to sustain the environment of trust needed. Eliciting user feedback can manifest three related problems. The first of these problems is the willingness of users to provide feedback when the option to do so is not required. If an online community has a large stream of interactions happening, but no feedback is gathered the environment of trust and reputation cannot be formed. The second of these problems is gaining negative feedback from users. Many factors contribute to users not wanting to give negative feedback, the most prominent being a fear of retaliation. When feedback is not anonymous, many users fear retaliation if negative feedback is given. The final problem related to user feedback is eliciting honest feedback from users. Although there is no concrete method for ensuring the truthfulness of if a community of honest feedback is established, new users will be more likely to give honest feedback as well.

Other pitfalls to effective reputation systems described by A. Josang et al. include change of identities and discrimination. Again these ideas tie back to the idea of regulating user actions in order to gain accurate and consistent user feedback. When analyzing different types of reputation systems it is important to look at these specific features in order to determine the effectiveness of each system.