Reputation System

I've mentioned this before a while back, but I think the ratings are stupid and troublesome.

What's 'really' the point of a reputation? Who's to say that my reputation means the same from one person to the next? Maybe Im wearing a purple outfit one day, and I get a lotta good ratings. Maybe someone doesnt LIKE purple, so they triple neg me. What did that prove to someone who just looks at my ratings numbers? Thats how the current system is used, pretty much insensibly. Stupid also is that more than 1/2 the time, people Pos rate me before they have even said hello.

My opinion is that people should be rewarded their stipend by time IN SL, as in total time as a SL resident (monthly Premium paying customer). People who've been here thru all ther hard knocks since beta or pre 1.2 even should be getting a bigger 'budget'. And the rating system should just be tossed out completely. How much simpler can it be made?

When u start in SL u get paid say $500 a week, and it goes up say $10 per week until some 'cap' as in say $1200-$1500 a week. The market would adjust itself around this and that would be that. Simple. I like simple in MY Second Life. I'm just talking about Premium monthly people, the Basic accounts at $50 a week or whatever they get seems just.

- Tay

I have NO idea where I am on a rating list... pay zero attention to it... and don't give a bugs fart

However despite the number of good ratings I get people often zone into the few neg ratings I have recieved and ask me about them.

I was triple negged because I told a Land Baron who swooped down in the middle of a land transaction and stole the property to kiss my fat hairy arse...

Triple negged because someone thinks I'm Anshe's alt (spread the rumor too...personally find that amusing...but then I do love Anshe to pieces)

Triple negged becuase I love Anshe to Pieces

and the last one...Fellow comes up to me and says... 'you are the UGLIEST creature in Avatar history no one could ever want you, so you must go out with me. As I'm the only one who will like you'... delcined his kind offer of getting naked and dancing for him...and recieved a neg rating on my appearance

All though it makes for amusing stories, more or less proves a lot of people's points... ratings are abused

let's say i build a pink and blue castle by our property line that blocked your view of the sunset. the light object purple tower blocked your path to the hub. i refused to change it at your request and ignored any attempts by you to compromise. wouldn't you want to take some recourse against my uncooperative manner? you and various other neighbours negrate me. i am an uncooperative member of the community.

your permissions on your clothing messed up and i start selling it at my castle. or i take your items and mark them up at my store without your permission. i hurl cruel invective in your directions that just barely evaded ToS violation. wouldn't you want direct recourse?

now if i signed up 5 alts on each of my five credit cards and neg rated you, that's abuse. or if a made a group of players who just went about extorting L$ under the threat of massive negrating, that's abuse.

but coercion is not necessarily bad in a community. it's necessary for communities to work. pray to our god or we will excommunicate you, don't water your lawn on mondays wednesdays or fridays or we will fine you, don't build blue and pink castles or we will negrate you

Interesting post Jauani. Re. Coercion: Some examples are clearer than others, but it is still, totally, utterly subjective. There is no right or wrong on the issue of pink and blue castles, there is only opinion. That is the problem, and it doesn't matter if we all go clicking ickle tickboxes, or muting people or barring them from our land - it is our view of someone elses behaviour and such is inconsistent and often abused. Ratings are an attempt to measure something that is intrinsically impossible to measure, behaviour, aesthetics, building prowess whatever spurious concept you choose - it is subjective, unscientific and mostly meaningless.

Coercion, at least in my dictionary, is the 'forcing of another to do something against their will by threat of force, moral or physical'. I think that this is difficult when set against the culture of freedom in secondLife. It is a thin line between community pressures that are applied when people are genuinely anti-social and mob rule when a militant few disapprove of another residents actions and take direct action to force them to change or leave.

But through all of this, the ticking and unticking of little boxes trivialises some very serious issues, and achieves zero. A neg rate invites one or more neg rates in return, a positive rate is very often reciprocated with a positive back. You cannot decide anything based on their ratings, you cannot truly know anything about a person, they are a complete waste of time and should be scrapped.


Jai

The worst use of the rating system I experienced sofar was people first neg rating me and then suggesting to undo the neg ratings if I give them a special deal on some land.

Of course, when you run a mall/market and you ban somebody for selling freebie items, for littering the sim or other reasons expect to be triple neg rated at least once, if not by some griefer's alts as well.

Another time when I earned a whole big bunch of neg ratings was when I reported somebody to the liasons who was using a bug to buy up 512 L$ newbie land plots and resell them for profit.

Mmmm, I consider these clear examples of how the current system is getting abused. There are a number of other incidents that I consider an abuse, but those may be a bit more controversial, so I left them unmentioned here.

just out of curiousity i wonder how many people here that are complaining have 100% pos rateings seems like the only people complaining have a ton of neg rateings.

i don't have any neg. ratings, and im not 'complaining'. I don't think any of us are complaining. This is a discussion topic started by a Linden - to get 'feedback' on this particular 'issue' in SL.

A rating system will only be benificial if everyone uses it the way it was designed. What exactly is the point in the current rating system, or any particular system for that matter. Is it to get a larger stipend each week? To let people know we are a super mass rater/have been mass rated.

To me, the birth date of an AV says everything. A longer PLAYING character (not one who joined, played, and now only comes on once a month to check their ballance) seems to be... to be what? What does it actually show?

When I make friends, I don't have a list of specific pro's and con's which I tick off as i chat with them. I check their profile, check their groups to see what they are into and then I just chat. If I like the person woohoo, if I don't, then fair enough. I will however admit that i do/have mass rated to get a larger stiped.

Perhaps a statistics window can be available to other AVs from your profile. This could show:
Averager time online per week/day
No. of friends
Popularity or quality of items sold, made or service provided

Instead of getting a stipend for the no. of ratings, instead have it for how helpful you are to the SL community. If you make good items that are sold and people like them, this will increase your stipend. If you own a great mall/danceclub or a nice service perhaps once a person has used this service, they have the option to rate the qualitty of the service.

Nope, not at all.. I have very few and have given very few.



Precisely. We are grown adults, trying to forge an online community - if we can't manage our personal and business relationships without bogus scorecards and popularity maths, then something is badly wrong. You might as well choose your friends by hair length or size of nose - it is about as useful.


Jai
(long haired and big nosed)

Thanks Jai for agreeing

Just out of interest, what is the highest stipend you can get for a week?

This one was indeed the silliest. I'm sure I remember this having happened at Dore! But yeah, that's silly. Yer cute. And all those legs are fuzzy and good for giving lots of hugs with. ^^

"Don't hate me... cuz I'm CUTE!" =D

PS: Besides that, should have negrated him on 'Tact' for having the UGLIEST pickup line in the freakin' universe.

I think what I'm hearing here in this thread are mostly 3 different things:

1. Negative ratings from alt accounts aren't really welcome by anyone.

2. Triple negative ratings aren't really too cool either.

3. Rating parties are an abuse of the system, to some people.

My take on this is that I think the system is mostly good because it is simple. I've played online games with no ratings system at all and I'll tell you what, they suck. We need a ratings system of some kind and we need it to be as simple as possible without making abuse too easy. Here are my suggestions:

1. No user should ever be able to rate any other user from multiple accounts. The system should check the billing information at the time of the rating. If he or she is attempting to rate another personal account or someone who has already been rated from another account, the rating shouldn't be allowed at all.

2. I don't really see any point in triple negs. What are the chances you're going to spend enough time around someone to figure out you don't like their building if you already know you don't like their behavior at all? It's probably not too common and if you do, you need to spend a little time thinking about who you're hanging out with if you dislike them so much. So we can deduce a triple negative is most always an abuse of the system. Only a single negative should be allowed from any given user to any other account. I would also suggest that comments be added to the negative ratings, as suggested earlier in the thread, so a reason can be given why the rating was issued and everyone can see it.

3. I don't like the idea of ratings parties and I haven't really benefited in any way so far from them, but I don't think there's any absolute way around them. The only thing I can think of is that maybe we need to have a cap on the number of people a user can rate in a day or per hour of play at 1L$ per rating. If you're rating more than 10 people in a day or per 5 hours of play, you're probably not really getting to know much about them anyway, but if you want to rate them at an increased cost, why not? Maybe it should go up to 2L$ after rating 10 users in a day, then 4L$ after 15 and so on.

I think another aspect of the system should be that the monetary benefit from ratings should probably be calculated with a diminishing return after some point. (Maybe with some sort of logarithmic scale after a couple hundred points?) Then again, I really don't know the rate of increase as it stands now so it's hard to comment on that part.

Only other thing I can think of is that if ANYONE ever neg rates anyone else and says to do something and it will be removed other than something like "stop reselling my stuff" or "stop harassing me," the chat history should be sent to the Lindens and the offender's account should simply be suspended. We don't need that sort of stuff in this game at all.

I got neg rated once because I wouldn't click on some asshat's gambling cube.

3 times for that.

Disclaimers:

-I'm still new to SL, having arrived two weeks from yesterday.
-I don't really play the ratings game...I reserve giving ratings for things that especialy impress me. Or for griefers. I don't care much about being rated.

That said: I do want some form of negitive ratings in place. I've run into my fair share of griefers and sometimes an abuse report just isn't enough...the Lindens can't always respond right away (or the griefer knows how to walk the fine line between annoying and banable) and you're not always lucky enough to be/find the landowner and be able to kick him away. I'd like to shoot the offender away but I realise that I risk getting an abuse report filed against *me* if I do that. So I want *something* to throw at him, to warn other people and perhaps even disuade him a little.

Will people abuse the system? That's a given. (From which it follows that perhaps there ought to be stricter rules against giving false negitives/griefer tags.) I don't believe that there's any system that won't be somehow exploitable.

This will be somewhat jumbled. I apologize, but I couldn't sleep because this stuff was banging around in my head and I need to get it out. I haven't read very much of this thread, so this is not in response to anything that anyone has said or proposed. Just my thoughts. And be warned, I don't agree with all of them.

I see three functions of the current rating system--only one of which it does well.

1) to reward people for doing good or creative or exciting things.
2) to provide an indication to other people of a person's character and skills.
3) to distribute wealth in an ad-hoc and meaningless manner.

That's really all that I have to say about that. Now, some general feelings that I have.

1) Ratings are good because they allow me to reward a person in a "matching gift" kind of way. I could give the person a dollar, but they would only have a dollar. If I rate them, it feeds into the whole stipend thing and magnifies my gift.

2) Ratings are evil because they are being used in unethical ways to game the system. But more importantly, they are fostering an artificial culture that is counter to a healthy society.

For me personally, it creates internal conflict every time I meet someone. Should I rate them, should I not? If they rate me, should I rate back? I don't want to be impolite. Is acting like a normal human being something that requires a rating? What if they rate me and I really don't think they are all that cool, so I don't rate back? Do they know how I feel about them or do they think that I'm an asshole for not rating back? Or do they think I'm cheap. If I rate them first, do they think I'm just trying to get a rate-back? Does that negate my whole intent in rating them to begin with?

For me, it just adds a whole lot of foolish, but stressful dimensions to an activity that is already stressful for me as an introvert. For God's sake, why do I even have to know that someone has rated me. If they want to rate me, let them do it, but keep it similar to RL. We rate people in RL all the time, but we don't usually say things like "You seem like a really nice guy...here's a dollar for ya". It's an internal thing in our own minds.

And then, if they rate me, I can't help but question their motives. I don't know how to stop this, but it just amazes and perplexes me.

I don't think making ratings expensive will help (like $100). In fact, it might be better if we made them free, but impose some kind of weekly or monthly quota. Maybe the number of votes you have should be skewed by factors such as how much time you spend in the game or how many times you've posted to non-advertising forums.

Maybe you shouldn't be able to rate someone by just clicking on them. Or if you can, maybe you should only be able to rate certain things by clicking on them. Why should I be able to rate someone's building skills by clicking on their avatar? That makes no sense.

Maybe immediate rate-backs shouldn't be allowed at all. Maybe if I meet you in a club and I rate you, then you shouldn't be allowed to rate me back for some amount of time. It would sure add some mystery to the whole endeavor. Or maybe a rate-back should have a smaller weight than other ratings.

3) Positive ratings should be convenient to give and appropriate for the context in which they are being given. Negative ratings should be inconvenient to give.

For example, the place that I personally appreciate people the most is on the forums, so it should be easy to rate people from the forums. Unfortunately, rating someone for a forum posting seems ridiculously hard. There's no place in the forum to do it. Even if I login to SL, I haven't been able to find an easy way to rate someone who isn't standing next to me. I don't think you can do it from Find. If you happen to have an object that they created, you can do it, but otherwise you have to go somewhere to find something that they have built or owned or ... Am I missing something?

Conversely, negative ratings are too easy to give. If you are going to give a negative rating, you should have to...I don't know...go through a seven day wait period or something.

For me personally, I've decided to never rate someone when I first meet them, except maybe for appearance. But I guess if I really want to be responsible, I should try to figure out who created the dress or the animation, or whatever it is about their AV that makes it cool and rate the creator of that.

sigh, I'm going to bed.

Shack,

I won't try to address all your points... I couldn't if I wanted to.

But you said that you questioned people's motives when they rate you. I can see why... let me see...

It's often that I'll be at an event, or the Welcome Area, and someone I've never seen or heard of before rates me. Now, depending on my mood, I may rate back, or at least look round to see if that person should be rated back... or, if I'm busy, I just make a mental note to check later...

About 60-70% of the time, if I don't rate back within a couple of minutes, I find the rating removed... Well, in those cases, I guess the motives of the rater were pretty obvious.

<RANT>
One thing I do find INCREDIBLY annoying is when someone walks up to me and says, or more often IMs "would you like to trade 3 ratings?"... Aaarrrggghhh... so annoying... 3 ratings eh... well -1 behaviour for being so rude as to ask, appearence well... who knows... and building... maybe I should ask them to build something on the spot so I can judge it... and it better be good... and no, the fact that the WA is a no build area is NOT a freakin' excuse!!!
</RANT>

There, now I feel better... you can all carry on now...

By the way... if I rate you when I see you, it's cos I thought you were worth rating... you're under no obligation to rate me back... Just thought I'd say that.

Hi there, I'm new to Second Life (tried it first time yesterday) - so I'm about as unbiased as they come. One of the things that most impressed me about Second Life was the discovery that there was a reputation system at all and that people actually use it!

While I don't know much about Second Life yet, I've seen quite a few reputation systems and believe that Second Life has a pretty good one. While many others have commented that "people game the system", that's pretty typical of any system that has financial reward to it. That doesn't mean you're better off without any system at all though. In such a case, you just have to make sure that people don't get something for nothing. I.e. it "costs" a bit to give someone else a good reputation, it doesn't just happen for free. That's already built into the system since it costs $ to give someone else a rating, so it's set up somewhat correctly.

The problem comes when the gains from a positive rating become too far in excess of the costs of acquiring it - then you get adverse behavior. EBay's rating system had the same problem, you could purchase/sell a $1000 item and the rating you could gain was worth the same amount as if you sold a $1 item. So what did people do? They sold 100's of low cost items to quickly build up their reputations. I'm not sure, but from the postings I've read so far it sounds like there's a similar problem going on here as well. The fact that the gains from reputation exceed its costs (particularly if you're richer and money doesn't mean much) probably accounts for some of the disfunctional behavior. To imagine how important this balance is, pretend there was a new system where every point of positive rating for someone else eroded/subtracted one of your own - I think you'd be a lot more careful about who you gave good ratings to.

I think the nature of the rating system imbalance needs to be sorted out. Maybe it's because some people are richer than others (then a rating should could be charged as a proportion of one's wealth instead of a fixed price). Maybe it should be like slashdot (is that right?) where the stength/influence of one's rating is bigger if they are also rated posititively. Or perhaps it's something else, maybe it needs to be tied to transactions, cost some of your own ratings (e.g. 1 postive rating decreases your own by .25 or something), or maybe you have to limit the number of ratings players can give out in a period of time (perhaps they only get 1 rating they can give for every hour of play or something). Some kind of "scarcity" which prevents people from giving out rewards arbitrarily could be helpful.

Anyway, the last suggestion I'd make is that whatever you do and whatever changes you make, proceed VERY cautiously. Tiny differences in rating systems can have huge side effects, so before making any dramatic changes be sure not to undo the good things you've achieved so far. Might want to try tweaking with a small subset of users to see if any new changes work before applying it accross the board. While a few people probably dislike the existing system, probably there's many more who quietly enjoy/appreciate it who would be quite upset at it changing.

Negative ratings serve a useful function, but they don't go far enough.

My situation is that I have been ripped off on a land deal - someone (and I'd REALLY like to name names) promised weekly payments then jumped ship after the first week. My problem, I know... but it would help if I could warn other people not to trust this guy. And I would like to know who I can trust to make payments and who to not trust, and not just say nevermore. In a land with no recourse, trust is a weird issue.

I propose you consider a feedback system ala ebay for **transactions** only: something where you can make +/-/neutral rating, plus add a short comment - no monetary gain/loss. It would help with all purchases to know whether or not a vehicle works, whether something causes a lot of lag etc.

Ratings for bonus Lindens are dandy (who's going to say no to free money), but it probably has nothing to do with the original intent of what the ratings were meant to do.

Hi,

I’m very new, and I don’t have a lot of experience with rating systems. When I first arrived at the welcome area, a few messages popped up saying that people had rated me. I was still trying to figure out how not to sit on people, let alone track the names down and find out who they were.

That first day, I rated people back, once I figured out how to do it. But when I looked at my ratings, it seemed a bit silly, I hadn’t even built anything, and I had a build rating. Since then, I’ve only ever given a rating in a burst of joy for something special – someone giving me a private building class, or an AV I thought was really, really splendid.

I wonder if making positive ratings anonymous would help preserve their value? For me, it would take away the pressure of ‘’Oh, do I rate them back?’. The benefit is then all for the person being rated, with no expected return for the person doing the rating. Rating could be more of an accolade, instead of a linden-loaded handshake. People could still IM to say they’ve rated you, and ask you to rate them back, but it will be a little more difficult.

I understand the reason for negative ratings, although I haven’t given or received one (yet!). But I understand why anonymous negative ratings would be a very bad idea indeed.

Cheers,
Fairge

I slogged my way through 15 pages of thought,angst, humor, sadness, and much more and are again reminded why I love Second Life so very much....the sheer diversity.
I am no ratings expert, and I do not proclaim to be. I joined sl in May with a premium account as a way to ensure myself of some in games money so that I did not have to go to GOM or IGE every other day. I do not build or create due to physical limitations so in having a monetary commitment to SL, I would be sure of some game moneyI could count on a week. To this day I really have no clue what ratings mean , and personally without digressing into a whole discourse of the subject think slicing them away from gaining in game money is just fine to me. I rarely look at the leader board, since I have no clue what it really means.
I feel that in a broarder sense we all rate things in real life, be it cars, houses, jobs or physical attributes.What I deem valuable someone else may see as total crap.
I have no doubt the current system is seriously messed up and while I saw many ideas and concepts about ratings that made some sense, personally I am fine with doing away with them.
I guess the bottom line to me is this. If you want some(not very much) money in a week not doing anything but logging and and having a great time, get a premium account. This may be seriously screwed up thinking, but its how I see it. I have tried dancing and event hosting to increase my stipend too, also modeling ...doing what I can do.
Just my own 1 Linden on this subject
Huggies to all

An interesting suggestion made to me by a non-SL player:

Make ratings fade after a certain time period, say, a month.

- You need to keep interacting with people to gain benefits from dwell
- Rate parties can't permanently benefit a person
- neg rates fade with time
- much more similar to the ebay rating system
- leaderboard not determined largely by people abusing the system

Additionally, I realize two other changes might need to be made to accomodate:
- the bonus for ratings increased, as people will obviously average a lot less rating
- a simpler way to see ratings, so you know when to rerate people. I would suggest putting your ratings for a person right in a person's profile.

I like the fade-out idea.
And the problem with neg rates is that one might be neg rated by someone very unpleasant -- and in that case the neg rate is not an accurate warning for others. It's SLIGHTLY more of a warning when someone has GIVEN many negs.

i dunno if this has been suggested yet but here's my suggestion for the ratings system. leave it exactly the way it is now except for two changes.

1. don't have it affect anyone's money either through bonuses or having to pay to rate.
2. don't let anyone see the numbers ever.

i'm kidding. well half kidding.

I like the fading idea too.

222 pieces of feedback over three months??? We probably need more before useful generalizations can be found.

Glancing through this thread I see a lot of solutions being proposed without first stating what the goal of a ratings system in SL is. (I didn't read them all, I'm guessing some of you touched upon this). Obviously given that there are many solutions presented, you all have some idea as to what you feel the goal is. I'm gonna take a crack at it now.

I suppose the overarching goal of any system implemented within SL is to enhance the residents' experience in-world. To do that, though, we need to broadly look at different types of residents, why they enjoy Second Life, and how we can make things even more enjoyable. Obviously LL has a list of these types of enhancements and feel that a reputation system may help achieve an even better experience.

One problem lies in the fact that SL has no inherent goal, mirroring real life more than, say, an MMO that runs on rails and has rigid systems of play where unacceptable behavior is more clearly defined. SL has the TOS to define unacceptable behavior, but some of the goals I read above for the ratings system are to discourage behavior that is considered anti-social and greedy. Hopefully we can all agree at this point that SL is a place not a game (and if you don't agree go and read your Bartle and the come back and argue) but because for most it's a leisurely pursuit, there are going to be those residents who *game* any system put in place. Some may not like this, but the goals of those residents are just as valid as anyone else's goals. Whether it be getting on the leaderboard, getting a popular place, making $ through land baroning, etc, these goals are as valid as meeting people, building and scripting cool things, creating clothing, etc. I'm not saying you have to like it, only that they are valid pursuits in-world.

So different player goals present a challenge in creating a rating system. This isn't ebay where (as someone mentioned) ratings are based solely on transactions and serve a narrow purpose. So can a rating system enhance everyone's experience? People who are social, people who sit in their lab building or scripting, people who spend 3/4 of their SL time in Photoshop creating clothing, people who buy and sell land, etc.

Lemme put this another way: I don't think a ratings system should discourage any behavior that is allowed in the TOS. I feel this is unfair. I also don't think it should reward behavior that unfairly favors a certain type of player.

Now some brainstorming/thoughts (I'm thinking as I type this so please excuse possible logical fallacies, etc).

Involvement in the ratings system should be a resident's choice
Now, I know some of you are probably thinking "but so and so is a jerk and did XYZ mean thing to me and the world must know!" Wouldn't it be great in real life if we could rate people and above their head people could see their ratings? Ooh, imagine if you could add text like "Crappy boyfriend" "Terrible dad" "Bad in bed" "Likes the Yankees" "Athiest" "Voted for Nader". As we've seen time and time and time again in these very forums: there are two sides to every argument and everyone is allowed their opinion. I think this is one thing the FADE concept above was trying to combat. And that may work within this suggestion, once the resident has made the choice the be a part of the ratings system.

Two possible types of ratings:

1. Automatic - given by system based on specific metrics
   
2. Manual - given by residents based on a set of predefined criteria
   

Regarding Automatic, I'll just re-iterate: if it must be done make it fair. If it's about rewarding behavior that enhances SL, define that behavior for all resident types and reward it.

Manual, i.e. players rating players.
I think it was LF who mentioned the "I like to..." checkboxes in the profile. I think this is the right track. Not only allow players to opt-in to the rating system, but also allow them to define in what area they wish to be rated.

Accountability
If the system is to have negative ratings, which I'm not convinced it should, there needs to be accountability. I have a few neg ratings I received from alt accounts that have since been wiped. Even if they hadn't been wiped, if people had looked at those profiles, they would have seen a couple neg ratings given and nothing else. I'm still not sure why I got them, but obviously something I did made someone unhappy at some point. Tie the ratings and even the comments to the person that made them. If I've got a bunch of positive ratings from happy customers with nice comments it offsets the negative ones. Problems with this -- obviously the comments are just more for LL to police for TOS violations -- probably not a good idea. Perhaps give residents the option to clear their ratings history every six months.

Limited Ratings Pool
The idea of limiting the amount of ratings you can give is intriguing. I like the idea of basing the number on avatar age (and not just cause i"m old ). And perhaps if negatives are included, they draw from the same pool. So if I have ten ratings to give and ALL of them are negs, well, that says something about me as well (see accountability).

How to Rate Residents: Old-style Voting Machines
How to implement the rating is just as important as the system mechanics. The great thing about the old voting machines were they allowed residents to EASILY say they liked something. We need to make rating easier. The implementation now favors social ratings. When residents are wandering around the world, I'm not sure they remember or even know they can right click on a building/vehicle and rate it. We need a simple, standard way to facilitate all types of ratings. This also may involve an abstraction layer especially if we want people to rate scripting. We've got a lot of people playing who don't understand that it's the script that runs the vehicle-- they just know they can drive it. And you can't neccessarily pass the rating for the vehicle design on to the scripter (since the vehicle may handle really nicely and have a great script but look like a jalopy).

One last thing: I've been playing a few other MMOs recently and I find myself wishing I could rate people positively in those worlds. I actually instinctively right-click before I realize I can't do it. Granted, there's only a couple things you one could rate them on (behavior, outfit, leadership). Maybe this system needs to just be really simple. Every six months a resident gets a pool of 5 ratings they can use for positive or negative. Residents can opt-in or out of the system. In a resident's profile is a tab with the list of their rated residents.

Wow this is a complex topic ; there is a big part of me that says it's not worth it and that no system put in place will not be abused and consequently upset people. If it doesn't enhance the residents' experience, don't do it. I really need to think about this more, but I hope the above scattered braindump contributes a little bit to the discussion.