Trust Assignment
From The Socknet
Some providers may want to experiment with trust systems, in which users rank their trust (secretly) for each friend and service. Users use trust to determine which friends and services can see their messages, services, and other friendships. This document proposes two mechanisms for querying the user for the level of trust he has in a friend.
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Determining Trust
Determining trust can be a difficult process because it asks the user to relate an arbitrary number to other arbitrary numbers.
- David is 50% trusted
- ServiceX is 1% trusted
- Pati is 100% trusted
If the user makes a new friend, Micheal, then he'll want to assign a trust level to him. He may want to give Micheal more trust than David, but less than Pati. But how much more and how much less?
There are two example systems that can assist in this:
Provide a percentage bar
When the user chooses a percent, show the names of the user just above that mark and the user just below that mark.
In the example, if the user picks 75%, he'll see the message "Trusted more than David and less than Pati". If this is not what he was looking for, he should choose a different trust level.
Follow a short tree of questions and don't show %'s to the user at all
- Do you trust Micheal more than, less than or equal to David?
- More
- Do you trust Michael less than or equal to Pati?
- Less
- Trust assigned.
This system doesn't require numbers and works in O(log n) time. 200 friends requires less than 8 steps. 5000 friends requires less than 13 steps.
A new friend should not be trusted more than someone trusted 100%. The question at this point should only give the options of trusting less or equally.
Trust assignments of 100% often have a special meaning. For example, spam reports might be automatically propagated when trust is 100%.
For the first friend that a user makes, the user should only be asked if he trusts the friend completely. If he doesn't, the friend should be given a default trust level.
Scaling
There may be reasons to scale a user's entire set of trust assignments down. If this is the case, 100% assignments should not be changed, because they have the special meaning described above.
