Comments on: Gorb: Taking Personal Reputation To A New Low

By: Arverne Entreprises » Blog Archive » Réputation en ligne : c’est parti !

Wed, 28 Nov 2007 13:11:03 +0000

[...] Gorb, que nous présentions ici, identifie lui aussi les individus par leur e-mail. On ne note donc pas un individu (au sens [...]

By: TechCrunch en français » [fr] Réputation en ligne : c'est parti !

TechCrunch en français » [fr] Réputation en ligne : c'est parti ! — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 11:37:49 +0000

[...] Gorb, que nous présentions ici, identifie lui aussi les individus par leur e-mail. On ne note donc pas un individu (au sens [...]

By: Proyectos en Castellano en TechCrunch - Carrero Bitácora de los Hermanos Carrero, David Carrero Fernández-Baillo y Jaime Carrero Fernández-Baillo.

Sat, 14 Jul 2007 12:05:25 +0000

[...] TheGorb [...]

By: » What is Your Online Reputation? - Law School 1L, 2L, and 3L

» What is Your Online Reputation? - Law School 1L, 2L, and 3L — Sat, 14 Apr 2007 02:37:42 +0000

[...] available online like an Amazon.com book review for anyone to see. This site has been criticized by internet commentators. It also raises questions about how libel and defamation laws will be [...]

By: Reckoning Day For Venture Capitalists?

Reckoning Day For Venture Capitalists? — Sat, 24 Mar 2007 02:55:08 +0000

[...] First, since most startups are turned down for funding, there will be a tendency for people to leave negative comments, and readers need to take that into account. How well a fund treats the many entrepreneurs they turn away, of course, matters too, and that feedback is valuable. I think a good addition to the feedback form is a simple box to check if you were funded or rejected to help give readers context. Also, the face that this is a bit of a private club, and non-anonymous, should help mitigate many of the issues we mentioned with another feedback site, Gorb. [...]

By: Mary

Mary — Sun, 18 Mar 2007 12:56:47 +0000

Do they really think reputation is just about conduct? What people think about you can depend on lots of other things too, not just on what you actually do.

For example, one of my friends in 7th grade had a very slutty reputation. She was not promiscuous - in fact, she didn’t even date. She did suffer from a severe acne problem, so the local bullies decided she was too ugly to treat like a human being and made up perverse rumors about her as well as harassing her in other ways. Sadly, at our school the jerks like that outnumbered the kids like me who did accept her.

Now I wonder how many people with low ratings on TheGorb will actually be badly behaved and how many will just be lonely kids who can’t be sexy enough for their classmates to respect them…

By: Steven

Steven — Sun, 18 Mar 2007 06:39:05 +0000

What happens if the system can’t compute because the dynamic nature of the world give it something it

doesn’t have a variable for?
http://www.datconverter.net

By: nm

nm — Fri, 16 Mar 2007 14:46:29 +0000

Check out a different perspective on this site http://www.funanymore.com/2007.....rb-wuffie/

By: Nikolay Kolev

Nikolay Kolev — Wed, 14 Mar 2007 20:28:34 +0000

I don’t know about your experience, but most comments I get on eBay as a buyer are seller ads! I had once to post a negative comment on a seller and I immediately got a negative comment in return. I was right, the seller was wrong. Nice “rewarding” tactic! I hope that Feedback 2.0 addresses these!

I think it’s terrible that Gorb mixes personal and professional! Those two have to be kept separate!

RapLeaf is a better solution and its growing adoption is the a clear indication. Gorb looks a lot better though. I hate RapLeaf’s poor design. If their badge looked nicer, it would have a much wider adoption. It’s plain ugly!

By: Drew

Drew — Wed, 14 Mar 2007 14:33:46 +0000

Oh please don’t add me to your little internet Burn Book! (a la Mean Girls) Imagine the cat fights which will ensue in high school halls across America. I say go for it!

By: Spunky

Spunky — Wed, 14 Mar 2007 05:07:53 +0000

ps: Why would I want anyone to know my neighbor’s an asshat? Because they might change their asshat behavior. In addition, if I was a buyer, I would want this valuable information as a factor when weighing the decision to purchase a home.

By: Spunky

Spunky — Wed, 14 Mar 2007 04:55:33 +0000

I thought of this service a long time ago, for good reason. I wanted people to know what an asshat I had for a neighbor. I know for a fact that my other neighbors agree. Anyway, its counterproductive. While neighbors are a significant element of whether you enjoy your home, you don’t want to start slashing them, since it would drive down property values to say the least. I had great name for it though: neighborater.com

By: peanut

peanut — Tue, 13 Mar 2007 14:37:35 +0000

I don’t know what country they’re trying to hit with this ill-conceived service, but it is a clear violation of EU human rights legislation. They are going to get sued to hell if EU state citizens start seeing their details posted up on there with no agreed Transactional Relationship.

Particularly where employment email addressees and details are used to rate people.

By: Vikrant

Vikrant — Tue, 13 Mar 2007 13:24:26 +0000

I do not see it as a great startup in Online reputation arena. It lacks the foundation i.e. feedback based on facts and free from biases.

Also, another area of challenge for online reputation system is multiple identities created by people. Probably a mashup of OpenID and a good reputation system can help solve the problem.

By: LaDawn

LaDawn — Tue, 13 Mar 2007 11:37:57 +0000

If you ain’t got something nice to say, say nothing. The people I have given recommendations to in Linked deserve it. The people who don’t have no recommendation from me.

By: Spiel

Spiel — Tue, 13 Mar 2007 11:09:06 +0000

And the overall purpose of this service is what exactly?

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Tue, 13 Mar 2007 09:57:30 +0000

I think that the safeguards in place at techcrunch for anonymous comments are non-existent. Nobody knows who speaks here, and yet they want everybody else held at a higher standard.

By: Bob

Bob — Tue, 13 Mar 2007 08:38:47 +0000

I agree with others who’ve posted that this is a solution searching for a problem. This seems pretty valueless to me and not very entertaining either.

By: Mike

Mike — Tue, 13 Mar 2007 07:53:35 +0000

@ Rational Beaver (#24)
You win the award for comment of the day.

By: Afraid of getting BorG'ed

Afraid of getting BorG'ed — Tue, 13 Mar 2007 05:39:26 +0000

Correction… id does mimick this blog.

By: nick

nick — Tue, 13 Mar 2007 05:39:20 +0000

http://www.waxy.org/archive/20.....bait.shtml

What ever happened to privacy?

By: Afraid of getting BorG'ed

Afraid of getting BorG'ed — Tue, 13 Mar 2007 05:38:44 +0000

“In real life”, every defamer has an identity. Even the concept of whispering your opinion to a friend carries the fear of “what if that ‘friend’ lets someone know what I said.” Providing complete anonymity does not mimick anything in real life.

What a complete sham. Leveraging the negative to make a buck. This site will seriously hurt people, no doubt. I am actually pretty disgusted.

By: Greg

Greg — Tue, 13 Mar 2007 05:38:00 +0000

I wasn’t around for the heyday of FC, or at least wasn’t aware it got that bad, so I’ll have to take your word on that. I think you have a good point, and I certainly don’t want to marginalize the effect that sort of talk can have, but there are a couple of reasons I think, or at least hope, that Gorb won’t wind up like that.

First, you’re talking about FuckedCompany. I’m guessing their user base were mostly either pissed about losing their jobs recently, bubble gawkers trying to stir up gossip, or just jerks looking for a place to troll. Either way, a bit narrower and less savory slice of the Internet than Gorb might (I want to stress the “might”) get.

Secondly, Gorb has mechanisms to downplay the horrible trolling - voting down bad comments, for example. And hopefully your ranking is more than just a straight arithmetic mean of people’s replies, which would end up minimizing the outlying trolls.

Look, obviously you’ve dealt with a lot more of this crap then I have, and a lot of what I’m using to defend Gorb is conjecture or hypothesis at the moment, but I don’t want to write this service off as doomed to failure just yet, or start going Chicken Little about my reputation immediately landing in the gutter. Not to call anyone out, but comment 45 is a good example of what, at this point, I’d call over-reacting, and 50 is actually a little scary, if he’s implying what I think he is.

By: Michael Arrington

Michael Arrington — Tue, 13 Mar 2007 05:15:09 +0000

When FuckedCompany was a really big deal in 2002-2003, there was a ton of gossip and really hurtful stuff about just about everyone in companies that were in trouble. Who was a slut, who was a womanizer, who stole what, etc. Some of it had a factual basis, some didn’t. All comments were anonymous. It was incredibly hurtful to people who got caught up in it.

By: Greg

Greg — Tue, 13 Mar 2007 05:10:36 +0000

Arrington - You’re exactly right, not being able to opt out is going to cause problems for someone at some point. Whether it really matters is something else - I imagine that even if this takes off, anyone reading it will take the results with a grain of salt, considering what the site is. If checking this becomes a standard hiring practice, along the lines of companies Googling potential hires, that might be a problem.

Personally, I’m not inclined to take the Gorb too seriously. Then again, you attract a lot more trolls than most people, so a rating on a site that seems like an interesting diversion to us might be a bigger deal for you.

Still, I think there’s some value in people being able to say things about you that you have no control over, and the fact that users can rate feedback should at least mitigate the effects of trolling.

But you might be right. At the very least, I’m interested in seeing how things shake out, and whether it becomes another bilious cesspool, or if worrying about your Gorb rating becomes a sort of community conscience for the Internet.