Reputator.net
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.
Robert said,
August 9, 2006 @ 10:25 am
Wanneer gaat ie echt volledig online Sjors? Ik wil er graag over bloggen zodra dat zo is!
Janneke Visser said,
August 9, 2006 @ 4:43 pm
Hoi Sjors
Je afbeeldingen staan verkeerd gelinkt.
Voor de rest ziet het er geweldig uit. Ik ben zelf ook bezig met mijn eindexamen project van de hku. Ga je met dit ook echt online.. Laat het me dan weten. Freelance klussen zijn altijd welkom.
groetjes Janneke ID
zheng said,
August 10, 2006 @ 2:18 am
congratulate you:)
sjors said,
August 10, 2006 @ 7:37 pm
Hey bedankt voor jullie comments, het online gaan van de website staat nog even ter discussie, waarschijnlijk half september. De conceptuele uitwerking daarentegen kan aan het eind van deze maand al verwacht worden.
Julius said,
August 11, 2006 @ 10:46 am
1. Do you think adding a function for negative reputation could be useful?
I think you might want to try to do it without the negative reputation at first. Once you have a test running with that, it is easier to guess if a negative reputation might do some real damage to someone (who’s a nice guy).
2. Should you be able to create public profiles about some-one who doesn’t have a personal profile
Hm.. interesting question. For my Helpalot.org I want to do something like that, being able to judge a charity even when charity is not on the page themselves.. But for pure personal profiles it kind of seems a little less fair to me, charities are acting in the public domain, some people might just want to be left alone. Still if there is a need, it’s going to be hard to stop it.
3. Would an add-friends connection be any help
Is that in relation to question 2? or just a social aspect of the site. I would include a buddylist type of thing, yes.
4. Is this a good idea anyway (why / why not)
Good question :). I think you have two problems, first it looks to me like a mix of LinkedIn and Opinity and perhaps others that I don’t know of. Both are big competition perhaps.
Second, I’m not really sure if people would be motivated to spend their time filling in these profiles, ok people like to talk about themselves (I do ;)). But are they willing to spend time judging others profiles..
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.
I’d say you survive, but I’m no teacher. I think you have to convince them there is a real problem you are solving here and that your site is the answer. At this moment you have not totally convinced me of either of these. On the other hand, the design looks good and I think you’d at least should get the credits for your serious efforts on this.
sjors said,
August 11, 2006 @ 4:09 pm
first of all, thanks for your comment
1. the question if negative reputation should be possible, is part of the question if public profiles of people not in the system should possible to create. The original idea was, that this site could also be a help if you where ripped off on eBay or something. But i think i will now focus primarily on the freelance people (without making it hard for traders to use it)
2. See first answer, I will probably leave it out for now, Reputator is only for happy happy happy people
3. I’m doubting about this one too, i think my goal should be “providing every-one who wishes, with a biography that others can trust” But i will certainly keep it in mind if i go further in the freelance direction
4. Well never mind the competition
but indeed i mashed up a hand full of sites 
(and added some ideas of my own) But i will take more effort in explaining the problem in my presentation, thanx.
5. mm I shall take more time in convincing you and others of the problem first than.
Fred said,
August 12, 2006 @ 2:33 pm
Sjors - Looks cool! Can’t wait to give it a spin. Congrats!