[OLR] Exercise 6.3: Trust and reputation: how is it achieved?

Analyse and comment on other aspects of online trust and reputation that you feel are worth discussing across any TWO online communities. Consider how design for usability, sociability and sustainablity can help to foster trust and build a reputation among users especially the pragmatists, conservatives and the skeptics.

Online trust is a bit like the Mosh Pit. If you understand what to expect you can expect a certain level of predictability of outcome: (Yes you got caught and carried over the wave of people. Yes you got banged and bruised and lost your wallet).

As an inherently conservative person I don't over trust online communities. I always keep a healthy measure of how much disclosure am I involving myself in here? However briefly I'll compare CSU and Rangefinderforum.com

The CSU Interact online community gets a certain level of default trust sascribed to it by me simply by dint of being backed up by a known bricks-and-mortar university with certain level of expected expertise and credibility that one would feel crosses over from the bricks and mortar into the online. In a sense CSU's online trust and reputation are a product not grown out of slick interfaces or particularly good human design but out of the fact that it's online forums are run by an accredited Australian university. University administered usernames that are available only to enrolled, fee paying students also contributes to the sense of trust and reputation. Lets face it, CSU interact is after I've bought not before.

In contrast, Rangefinderforum builds it's trust in other ways because, as a forum, it's not an annex od some fundamentally trustworthy institution like a university. The fact that the site makes it easy to join, keeps advertising extremely discrete, is clear about the sites links to a camera retailer and is clear about funding ongoing running costs through running member classified ads indicates that the forum creators have paid careful attention to usability, sociability and sustainability design features. A simple example of how this is trust is maintained is through the member classifieds (and these cameras can sell online between unseen people for up to thousands of dollars US) where all members are free to make comments about sellers and their wares. This does two things, it reassures people about shared experiences and it reinforces the sense of community through the very act of making the buying and selling part of the forum as sociable as the rest of the forums and this makes for a sustainable online presence.

So. CSU - trust in the flow on from being an accredited learning institution. Rangefinderforum trust through being open about the funding model and maintaining the sociability levels and constructing a site that isn't in-your-face with respect to advertising.