(A dutch post this time, when the concept is more stable i will write in english again)  Wellicht kan ik toch iets met freelancers, mijn eerste probleem daarmee was, dat freelancers elkaar onderling niet willen helpen, omdat een positieve beoordeling van een collega hun eigen kans op de markt naar beneden haalt. Maar geïnspireerd door http://programmermeetdesigner.com/ waar de doelgroep heel duidelijk is wil ik het toch proberen. Omdat designers programmeurs nodig hebben, en programmeurs designers, is er misschien wel iets te bedenken. Programmeurs en designers zitten elkaar tenslotte niet in de weg. Helaas kunnen ze wellicht elkanders werk ook minder goed beoordelen. Maar de bereidheid om toch aan elkaar reputatie te bouwen zal groter zijn omdat ze er wel allebei mee vooruit komen.

De mogelijkheden die ik dan voor me zie zijn:

• Designers zoeken programmeurs
• Programmeurs zoeken designers
• Buitenstaanders zoeken designers en of programmeurs
• Iedereen kan elkanders werk beoordelen en elkanders specialiteiten aangeven

 
Specialiteit (reputatie velden)
Leden kunnen dan enkele specialiteit opgeven, en deze kunnen door ander bevestigd worden. (Waarbij dan gekozen moet worden tussen de strategieën: wil ik de beste zijn op een gebied, of wil ik mee doen op velen gebieden)

Transactie afspreken (ebay-style)
Verder kunnen designers en programmeurs via Reputator dan hun project in “borg” zetten, en elkaar na het aflopen van het project beoordelen op presentaties (zoals: nette aanlevering, snelle levertijd, duidelijk overleg) Dat dit waarschijnlijk net als bij eBay altijd resultaten van 80 – 100% tevredenheid zal gaan opleveren hoeft op zich geen probleem te zijn.

Profielpagina
Op de profielpagina kan ook een portfolio worden aangelegd waarbij een licht onderscheid gemaakt zal worden door projecten die via Reputator tot stand zijn gekomen, en projecten die ze zelf in / aangevoerd hebben. Aan de publieke zijde van de portfolio kan vervolgens de kwaliteit en inhoud van deze projecten worden besproken.

Groepsvorming
Uiteindelijk kunnen programmeurs en designers die elkaar via Reputator hebben gevonden ook weer groepen vormen waardoor externe opdrachtgevers eenvoudig met hun opdracht bij een team van specialisten terecht kunnen.

Dankzei het reputatie systeem kan al bij het invoeren van een vacaturen direct een juiste match worden gegeven van potentiële kandidaten. Andersom kunnen mensen ook getipt worden als nieuwe vacatures de juiste mix van hun kennis bevatten.

Uiteindelijk zou dus de kwaliteit van de communitie die van iedere deelnemer moeten versterken en 1 en 1 samen 3 moeten vormen.

Widgets

En omdat widgets nu eenmaal zo handig zijn een Reputator Widget waarin je kunt zien wat de top 3 specialiteiten van de freelancer zijn, en wat zijn algehele score op de betrouwbaarheids index is.

Vragen:

Denk je dat dit gaat werken? Zullen mensen elkaar op vriendschappelijke wijze feedback willen geven als op de achtergrond meespeelt dat ze daarmee zichzelf uit de markt prijzen.

Welke reputatie gebieden verwacht je? Worden dat programma’s voor de designers en talen voor programmeurs. Of worden het abstractere voorbeelden, zoals creativiteit en ordelijkheid.

Als je een samenwerking aan gaat, op welk gebied kun/wil je dan beoordeeld worden op creativiteit en kwaliteit of liever op dingen als snelheid van leveren en duidelijkheid van communiceren.

Verder is alle feedback welkom en hoop ik morgen met de screens te kunnen beginnen.

A stormy brain day came with four outcomes

1. A social freelance site

In style of linkedin meets programmer meets designer with a mix of community..

A jobsite for freelancers. Friends won’t probably be willing to give comments on other friends, because if they are positive, they might lose their opportunity to get a job for their self’s.

What is brings in return is the possibilities to rate clients, on subject like, fast payment, clear briefing etc. And the client can rate the freelancer in return on fast delivery and good work. So for a new job or new clients both sides can see faster which persons or companies to take.

2. A social weblogguide

Thanks to Robert in the comments I reminded my own writings about weblogs (and some research too) About trust in the blogosphere. Martin pointed a post about how to measure a blog’s success, but it has also some point about how to trust a blogger.

A social version of 9rules

The positive things would be, you can find easily the most reputated blogger on a subject you are interested in. And a blogger can get some feedback on the overall quality of his work with out having to beg for compliments.

The negative thing I could think of, is that if you have a popular blog that is read by thousands that your score will be high on any subject, no matter if you are really good about it or not.. Perhaps that can be solved by adding some categories.

So how will it look than? At Reputator you can make a profile, where you can add some personalia and give some posts or columns you consider to be good (like where the timeline is now). Others can discuss the quality of your articles, and can point you to other articles that are also good, but you forget about.

Where there are reputation area’s now, there could be blog subjects, where there is still voting possible on the quality of the writings on these subjects.

And because there is no direct money involved, friends and fans could still help you, without damaging their own position.

3. A social social guide

Closer to my first intentions “make the world a saver and more trustworthy place” I could give more focus on people that are conversation online. But since the biggest problems seem to be in social network where 14 year old girls can’t trust old man (you should really see the movie Hard Candy about this subject) So yes I like this subject, but there don’t seem to be real problems for me to solve there.

A variation about this should be make a demo on how Whuffie could be operated now (what Reputator already almost is) But since the feedback that I got back, the world isn’t ready to face Whuffie yet, perhaps in ten years time. (Don’t say I haven’t told you about it)

4. Noting yet

Today I had my graduation presentation but I didn’t made it yet, they gave me an extra two weeks to work on it. Their main critic was that my project needed more focus.. Which brought me with some new problems with reputation systems, think with me,

Let’s say I give it focus, and I create a jobsite for freelancers. Some things will change, friends won’t be willing anymore to give comments on other friends, because if they are positive, they might lose their opportunity to get a job to one of their friends that they just gave some high rations on a particular field. So the friend-friend rating won’t work anymore.

What is brings in return is the possibilities to rate clients, on subject like, fast payment, clear briefing etc. And the client can rate the freelancer in return on fast delivery and good work. So for a new job or new clients both sides can see faster which persons or companies to take. And there will probably come some new balance in payment, companies with a good name, will be able to pay less, because freelancers are more likely to work for them because of their good name. And freelancers with a high reputation will be able to ask more for their work because of their good reputation. And than? Companies with a low reputation will be willing to pay more or less for a freelancer with a high reputation than a company with a high reputation might do? Or…

I’m sure it will an addition to sites like freelance.nl or perhaps even linkedin but I have the feeling that my project might lose some “hey lets make the world a better place” feeling

Don’t know yet, I hope I can think of a social use for the Reputator system, cause otherwise I might focus myself on Freelancers. They could use some more positive feeling. getafreelancer.com, guru.com, sologig.com (list from del.icio.us)

at 9rules.com i found some more (better looking) links as 37signals and programmer meets designer
Any other focus subjects are appreciated, they have to have something with people exchanging things (like objects, or services) and there has to be some reason to show good behavior for future reasons (like more money, more respect, more trust)

Things that are already there are:

Products ebay.com
Services linkedin.com
borrow objects borrowme.com

Or an other idea is young kids that help older people for a little money.. They could give the seniors a good reputation score for being friendly and give a good pay. And the seniors could give the juniors a good reputation score on being polite and doing a good job. Mixed with some local search possibilities this will finally give the answer on where do I find someone who washes my car here in the neighborhood.

in the media
Friday I got some positive comments on my project by Dutch web2.0 weblog BlueACe, although they have some questions if openness will create trust and truth in the end, they are looking forward to the release.

demo version
Last weekend i worked in completing all the screenshots i needed to give a complete vision of the project, you can visit the demo here, any comments are welcome again

screenshots updated
Based on the feedback i got, i changed some things in the screens on Flickr

front-page - removed the search for good reputation
personal profile - changed the color settings, and tried to make reputation areas more explicit
public profile - minor changes
directory - removed the search for good reputation, and added links to more pages

mailing list
On the front-page its possible to subscribe to my mailing list.

What is Reputator?

It’s an online social biography network. www.reputator.net
Who can use it?

Reputator was created to serve everyone, but especially those who depend on online created trust, like small traders and freelancers.

How does it work?

You can create a profile just like in any other site. With each personal profile, there comes also a public profile (similar in style to a wiki). The personal profile is the one you can edit, the public profile is open for the public to correct add and rewrite the information about you.

Why is there a public-profile about me?

By having a profile that can be edited by anyone, you are vulnerable for all kinds of comments, but by showing your weakness, you make clear that you have nothing to hide. That is, according to A. Baier, how trust is defined:

“One leaves the others an opportunity to harm one when one trusts, and also shows one’s confidence that they will not take it.” Baier, A. in Friedman, B., Kahn, P. H., Howe, D. C., Trust Online 2000 (pdf)

Where is the reputation coming in?

Glad you asked. Just like many sites these days, each profile can be tagged, with fields on which one person is trusted. Those “fields of trust” can be tagged multiple times by different individuals, each adding their own meaning about your biography and giving you a more complete reputation on the fields they’ve chosen to tag. This creates a growing and reliable reputation on certain fields.

Enough talk, show my pictures!

The front-page:

The front-page, with a huge search box for easy finding.
The search result page

After a search on the word “Design” you will get to the search result page / directory. Here you get all the results shown from high to low reputation.

The personal profile page (when you are not logged in)

The profile page, which can be build up in modules, has both a personal as a public side, and a reputation tag cloud. (two lines of people after degrees, to prevent you from, creating fake accounts for boosting your reputation)

Profile when you are logged in

As you can see on each subject there can be a discussion, and each discussion can be confirmed or declined by the owner of the profile (not removed however)
Questions for you

You could all help me by giving your overall impression about the design and the idea, and some answers on these questions would also be appreciated.

1. Do you think adding a function for negative reputation could be useful?

2. Should you be able to create public profiles about some-one who doesn’t have a personal profile

3. Would an add-friends connection be any help

4. Is this a good idea anyway (why / why not)

5. Since this is it, and I don’t have much time to make something new, will I survive my presentation with this, any hints and tricks are appreciated.

Well that’s it, press release can be downloaded here in English, en hier in Nederlands.