Yes, it is that way, and it is so for a reason. When someone asks for a high level favor they have to have a high rep, so you are basically turning down an important character in something he considers important. Imagine that the President of your country calls to you and asks you to do something that he considers important, if you decline, he surely can tell a lot of persons that you didn't do it, and all of them would frown on you declining to help such an important individual on an important matter. As for asking someone to work for you for a month, remember that again in order to have a level 4 favor you have to have a high rep (61+), which means that many people would be willing to help you as you are important and influential. And so, it is not surprising that you can get one to help you, even if only one, each month. I don't find it so strange.

Decivre wrote:

Sepherim wrote:

Yes, it is that way, and it is so for a reason. When someone asks for a high level favor they have to have a high rep, so you are basically turning down an important character in something he considers important. Imagine that the President of your country calls to you and asks you to do something that he considers important, if you decline, he surely can tell a lot of persons that you didn't do it, and all of them would frown on you declining to help such an important individual on an important matter. As for asking someone to work for you for a month, remember that again in order to have a level 4 favor you have to have a high rep (61+), which means that many people would be willing to help you as you are important and influential. And so, it is not surprising that you can get one to help you, even if only one, each month. I don't find it so strange.

Actually, while you can take a penalty to your networking test with a low reputation score, there is nothing in the reputation system preventing someone with poor reputation from asking for a major favor. Furthermore, the read-as-written elements of the reputation system do have a blatant hole in them: if someone uses their favor to ask something of me that conflicts blatantly with my own moral code (rape someone, transfer a slave, hide a body), even if it is illegal, I must obey or risk losing reputation for my refusal. That doesn't make sense to me.

At that point, maybe it is time to ask why the person is coming to you specifically?

I think part of the problem might be looking at the possible services listed in the table on page 290 and taking that as gospel for things you can ask from every social network. Say, for example, I have a large amount of reputation with the Argonauts and one particular individual asks me to kill a prominent scientist. In the past I have made no motions towards being anyone’s hit-man, and perhaps I have even taken steps to avoid randomly killing folks. Why would I loss rep with the Argonauts by refusing such a favor? There isn't any obvious reasons why such a scientist needs to be killed, and the Argonauts as a whole probably know this. In fact I might gain some rep by actively remaining loyal to the cause. The reputation loss mechanics are smuggled away in the GM section for a reason. In fact they are under a section that specifically titles itself as “advice”. When a character gains or loses reputation should be controlled by the intelligence of the GM, tempered and refined so that it doesn't just end up as a giant clusterfuck. Also note that rep loses are only ever taken is a favor is made public. So if someone asked you to kill someone for them, and you then refused, the only way you are going to take a rep hit is if that person comes out of the shadows and straight up announces that they want a guy dead. If they do that, the person who they want dead is also going to find out. Same for refusing to help blow up a habitat, or burgle a museum. It is probably not the best idea for someone to place a giant target on their head before they have even started to commit a crime.

Sepherim wrote:

As for Decivre's point, you could lose the rep and counter-attack by making public what he asked of you, and thus hurting his rep probably far more than your own, and even get them into legal problems. Not to mention that you could show that he has asked you to do something that goes against your values, which would probably get you the support of your Faction. It would certainly start a rep war probably, a meme war with it as well, and an interesting conflict to play. About a low level rep asking for a higher level favor, he has to burn rep in order to do so, which shows how far and important his petition for the favor is to him, and so, the rep loss should be according to that, so it gets treated in the same way by the mechanics for sake of simplicity. As for Gee4orce's comment no losing rep depending on the rep of the other, I think it could be a good system indeed, even with several sorts of modifiers according to circumstances.

Okay, let's try a more reasonable example of the problem, excluding illegal activity altogether. Let's see how people would react to it. An artist living on Titan is very popular, and known for her extravagant handmade costumes throughout the outer system. Her rep is very high, and the best portion of her habitat knows her. It was announced that a scum barge would be landing in a week, and they would be bringing a series of attractions and hold a big event. As a result, she is flooded with requests for her costumes numbering in the thousands, all with a due date of... the day of the big event that's coming in a week. Unfortunately, all her product is handmade, and she generally only makes a single costume every couple days. Even with the backstock she has, she can only realistically handle a couple hundred orders, leaving a couple thousand orders unfilled. According to the system as written, she has to take a rep hit for every favor request unfilled. Here's an even simpler example: how do you handle vacations? If some professional decides to take a hiatus from work, why should they take a rep hit every single time that someone decides to request a favor that they can't fulfill, because they aren't working right now? There are certain tasks that should get a rep hit if it is found that you refused them (refusing to report a crime, refusing to do a task you agreed to do previously), but the largest majority should have no consequence attached.

root@Rep loss for favors [hr] Yes, the Titanian artist would take a hit from every unfilled order where the customer is willing to publicly downrate her for not filling the order. However, the customers who had their orders filled will be uprating her for her work, and the Titanian community will likely downrate the people who downrated her for being too busy. Take a look at how ebay worked, where people really would downrate artists for not having the time to fill an unlimited number of orders. This happens all the time in a regular money economy as well, a good example being how Walmart will make massive orders from small companies, withhold payment as long as possible in the hopes that the company crashes from lack of cash flow, and then refuses to pay during bankruptcy because the company couldn't fill the order. This evil bullshit isn't new, it just isn't anonymous in a rep economy.

root@Rep loss for favors [hr] An oscillating pendulum is considered a stable system, as bounded inputs lead to bounded outputs. The reputations system is only more chaotic than a money system at a superficial level. The reputation upratings of the people who like the artist and her work act as a retarding function against the actions of the agent trying to tank her reputation. In addition, it is a non-linear system with feedback, which will act against the jackass by downgrading their reputation as well as removing the effect they had on the artist. Money is a reputation system with a memory constraint, so it is unstable in that it can grow without bounds once a certain threshold of capital is reached (look at the Oligarchs). Reputation systems, by being significantly more fluid, are also unable to diverge, and there is no good way to preserve reputation across generations to create an empire. Reputation systems are stable.

root wrote:

root@Rep loss for favors [hr] An oscillating pendulum is considered a stable system, as bounded inputs lead to bounded outputs. The reputations system is only more chaotic than a money system at a superficial level. The reputation upratings of the people who like the artist and her work act as a retarding function against the actions of the agent trying to tank her reputation. In addition, it is a non-linear system with feedback, which will act against the jackass by downgrading their reputation as well as removing the effect they had on the artist. Money is a reputation system with a memory constraint, so it is unstable in that it can grow without bounds once a certain threshold of capital is reached (look at the Oligarchs). Reputation systems, by being significantly more fluid, are also unable to diverge, and there is no good way to preserve reputation across generations to create an empire. Reputation systems are stable.

An oscillating pendulum is a stable [i]physical system[/i], but oscillation does not make for a stable economic structure. This can be seen with the United States economic system, which definitely oscillates but is considered anything save for stable. Furthermore, if a reputation system is more chaotic at a superficial and immediate level, then it makes a poor system by which to run a consumer market... purchases and transactions run at such a level, meaning that a reputation becomes largely worthless for day-to-day transactions. Rather than looking at eBay as a source of inspiration, I think that Bittorrent ratio systems are a better guideline for how a reputation system should work. Ratios are directly based on your investment and withdrawal from the network: the more you download, the lower your score; the more you upload, the higher your score. Moreover, Bittorrent ratios really are stable... a period of inactivity means that your ratio stagnates, rather than deteriorating. Lastly, your ratio becomes more stable overtime. The longer you have been a member of the network, the more you must download or upload to change your ratio in any discernable way. EP's reputation systems do not have any of these benefits, and the mechanics should be altered to befit these advantages of reputation systems.

root@Rep loss for favors [hr] There's a difference between physical systems and mathematical systems? I'll have to let Euler know. Anyway, the US economy is mostly based on a reputation system with memory (money), which is inherently unstable because compounded interest allows an individuals share of human resources to grow without bounds. The argument that a system that shows chaotic tendencies at an immediate level is not usable is a very good point, and the Bittorent system does show a way to stabilize this over time. I think the EP system could grow more stable if you don't look at the rep number as a linear scale between 0 and 99, but as an exponential system such that a high rep has orders of magnitude more stability than lower numbers. But I just added a magic step 2 to the system to make it work, so I'll just admit that Decivre is right. So, how do we suggest it gets fixed? I've been agitating for a rep module to be added to the site so we can play with different implementations of rep economies, but that initiative seems to have died a lonely death awhile ago.

Heh, now i find myself reminded of the debate related to d20 modern and its introduction of a wealth score. This turning the "simple" act of buying something into a roll of the dice to see if the persons "credit rating" could handle the purchase.

Actually you should write it for the fanzine, root, at least while an official one is not done. :)

I think I'm a few steps behind in the conversation, but this thread hit on a topic that has been bothering me about the Eclipse Phase universe. Namely, how do you deal with jerks? I understand that if someone is hitting your rep just to spite you, you can hit them back; but that just looks like a recipe for "everyone loses." Now what I'm beginning to gather is that all rep changes have to be public on the part of the uprater/downrater. What if all rep systems [i]require[/i] that the person giving good/bad rep to another give a distinct reason for the change. i.e. "I asked Bob to loan me his lawnmower and he said no because he thinks I'm a dirty Barsoomian." Anyone looking at Bob's rep will be able to see not only what Bob's score is, but the reasons people have given him that score. Additionally, I posit that it may help smooth things out in a reputation economy if the person being rated has the opportunity to try to explain their side of the story. So in the dress-maker example, she takes rep hits from disgruntled customers who didn't get their orders that essentially say: "I asked her to make me a dress; she didn't, therefore she is a bad person." The dress-maker can then reply: "I did not have time to make them all, so I decided which orders to fill on 'X reasonable basis.'" Viewers of the dress-maker's rep will be able to decide for themselves who is in the right, who deserves the uprating and who the downrating. That way the rep score doesn't fluctuate all that much until the general rep community gets to weigh in. I imagine this would both prevent unreasonable sudden rep loss as well as helping to curb people giving bad rep just because they are annoyed with the circumstances. Everyone gets to see they are a jerk. I realize I'm reading something into the system that's not specifically stated, but I find these concepts help me make sense of how the reputation economy works. What do you all think?

It is how I have always considered the Rep system to work. It is how my group has always used it, and how I have always GM'd it. At my table reputation has always been a crowd sourced venture, primarily to prevent the kind of douchebaggery discussed in this thread. One of the methods one of my players used in his own game was that any Rep gains/losses needed to be vetted to a rep goal before they were considered. That worked very well, it gave a lot of power to high reputation individuals as judicators, but didn't remove power from a collected effort of the masses. Edit 2: So, for example, say someone downreps me because I couldn't perform a favor. Before that downrep would appear on my reputation report it would need to gain a vet goal of 200 reputation. If a person with 80 reputation accepted that I should get the rep hit then I would only need 120 more towards the 200 before it gets added to my report. Edit: It was primarily used as a device to explain how the economy might be stabilized. For game purposes we didn't feel the need to change anything. But our table shies away heavily from using game rules to simulate the world. The world works how it is described in the fiction, the game rules exist to help tell the story of the players specifically. To be honest, the mechanics we are given in the rule book are abstract at best. Mold them, change them, alter them to your benefit. That is the Eclipse Phase motto after all, is it not?

I think this is worth a try... lets do some problem analysis. What are the problems of the Rep system as it is right now and where do we want to go?

root@Rep loss for favors [hr] A reputation economy has the limitation that it cannot readily be employed in any situation where there is a resource limitation. The Eclipse Phase world is post scarcity, and as such, the cost of maintaining a rep 0 individual's basic needs is also approximately zero (there is thermodynamic costs, yes, but Eclipse Phase has an overabundance of energy, so that isn't an obstacle). The only time when it is worth the effort to expel someone from a network is when they are becoming a social illness. Merely being dead weight is not a problem, but performing interesting research on nanoscale dissemblers using the habitat hull is. To use the Bittorent example, someone who is leeching (contributing nothing), is afforded a smaller datastream to keep them from abusing the network, but this is only needed because bandwidth is scarce. If there was no resource limitation, who fucking cares? Let them download their shitty movies all day; the cost of the effort to remove them is higher than the cost of ignoring them. Now, what constitutes crime in a post scarcity economy? I'm still working on that one, but it mostly seems to boil down to China Mieville's choice-theft. [EDIT] Does anyone happen to know China Mieville? I'd love to have his economic analysis of the Eclipse Phase setting, and we already know he's a gamer. He's at Warwick according to Wikipedia, so any of you around there should introduce him to the setting.

Going back to my Bittorrent comparative, one way that you can convert EP's economy structure into such a system is to simply make it work like ratio. Track favor points given and received (you get 1-5 points of positive favor by doing something for someone, and 1-5 points of negative favor for asking for something... based on what you ask for), and use those totals to know what someone's reputation is. To make it work like the system presented in the books, use this formula to calculate your ratio: 100(P/T)... where P is the amount of positive points you have, and T is the total amount of points you have.

XenoSean wrote:

What about the possibilty that a society decides someone is so awful we don't even want to feed this person? Or even that they are just useless wastes of space, a sort of "if we keep giving them things for free, they'll never have the motivation to do anything." I understand that this causes social problems as well, mostly that a person with an absolute 0 rep would have to turn to crime to survive; so maybe I've answered myself. Is it simply socially "cheaper" to feed the person or exile them to avoid forcing criminality?

The key advantage of a post-scarcity environment is that people don't really [i]need[/i] to do anything. Nanotechnology can take care of all your basic essential needs. Even if someone is a complete and utter scab, who does nothing for themselves, taking care of their need for food is about as simple as giving them a food maker and telling them to leave you alone. However, by giving them a maker, you now give them the means to contribute in some way, however minor. Me, personally, I would probably maintain my reputation by setting up a bar, and giving people free alcohol and snacks from my machine. It's not like it would take any real effort, because the machines would run on their own, and I could even have robots serve the drinks. That's the reason why a reputation network works the way that it does... the basic idea is that no one is really working, because a post-scarcity scenario gives you the opportunity to contribute in a way that you might enjoy with little need for effort. This is also the problem that such a scenario poses for a tabletop game... conflict fuels plot, and it is hard to create conflict in a world where general (albeit not necessarily specific) want is eliminated.

XenoSean wrote:

Ah, the good old "million monkeys, million type-writers, million years = Shakespeare" method. Now if we could only fork ourselves into infinity we'd at least have the million monkeys working on it. :)

Well, somewhat. The Million Monkey's principle is the idea that with enough things typing up random text strings, a few will eventually produce something legible... and eventually something profound (like Shakespeare). In this case, I'm hoping that at least a few of us aren't typing randomly. :D

People get bored. People will find things to do. Also, people in Eclipse Phase are a lot smarter, more beautiful, and generally better than we are. The average person in Eclipse Phase has a COG of 15 or so, compared to the average of today which would be closer to 10, and people in the Outer System are more likely to be sleeved into a morph that enhances that even further. They are more focused (Higher WIL), more intuitive (Higher INT) and can no doubt perform tasks that we can only dream of. They are better educated, education is not just more direct but it is much easier to access, and they have all the time in the world to practice whatever craft they wish. What would you do with your day if you didn’t have to worry about basic living costs? I know what I would do. I would continue on with my higher education, I would spend a lot of time reading up on the world around me (Think our politics are fun? That is nothing compared to the constant machinations of the Consortium), I would put myself onto the sign up lists for going Gatecrashing, I would maybe spend some time lounging on the Sun. Eclipse Phase might be a survival horror universe (And it most definitely is), but that doesn't mean there cannot be little rays of sunshine every so often :D

Now I'm imagining a corporation (hyper- or micro-) specializing in "productive vacations." "Come, join your fellow transhumans and build pyramids on Mars! Using the same techniques used in ancient Egypt, be a part of a huge cooperative endeavor that will stand for centuries. Nothing is more satisfying than seeing the product of the vast effort laying brick after brick after brick. These pyramids, however, are not a tomb for some dead overlord, but a testament to the power of the transhuman will!"

root wrote:

root@Rep loss for favors [hr] Hedonism and general dicking around all day is probably what the majority of people do, yes. However, if you will permit me a small dip into philosophy, not everyone will do that, and most people who do won't do so forever. There are a number of different types of rewards in the brain, and while carnality and hedonism are great and fun, they mostly feed the sensory pleasures. The pleasure of contributing to a society is another, different type of reward that is, by necessity, stronger than sensory pleasures. It has to be, or none of us would ever do anything else, except to avoid punishment. Since the frequency of the pleasurable rewards for contributing happen much more rarely, and take a great deal more work, evolution will have to have created a reward for it that surpasses simple physical pleasure. A simpler way to put it: The Internet is For Porn, but someone had to put it there.

The problem is defining what a person considers to be productive. To most people, sitting around all day playing Pokémon is anything but productive, but Pokémon players would disagree with that sentiment. Getting a full set of legendary equipment in World of Warcraft could be construed as non-productive but WoW players would disagree with that as well. And to put it in better perspective, many would consider sitting on an internet thread discussing the improvement of a tabletop game, for which the largest majority of us will never make a dime of profits in doing so, to be a complete waste of time... but I like to think that we are being productive in our own way. I think that in a post-scarcity world, the concept of subjective productivity will become a more universally acceptable concept. For instance, consolidating an empire within a fantasy simspace game will feel like a great achievement for those who play it... even though it only means that someone is the emperor of digital characters in a simulated world. But such will be the nature of achievement in a post-scarcity world. It reminds me of when people ask me "if you don't believe in a God, then what purpose does your life have?"... to which I always say "whatever I want it to have".

root@Rep loss for favors [hr] I am enlightened by the RSA. Thank you. 750 r-rep +2

XenoSean wrote:

This is one of the things I have the hardest time wrapping my head around in Eclipse Phase. I understand in the Inner System, and everywhere that isn't a new economy, people still have to work to make money to buy things; but in a rep-based/post-scarcity economy, what do people DO all day? The best answer I can come up with is art or invention, but I don't know that everyone is that talented. Is hedonism and doing nothing all day just that much more widespread than I had originally thought?

Draw. Write. Hack code. Come up with a new design as a gift for the environment control department. Post fanfic. Lifelog. Get in arguments on forums and be noticed for your eloquence, bullishness, or ability to find useful information in a hurry. Open source your custom software agents. Become a citizen journalist. Get blown out of an airlock because the subject of your articles noticed how many hits you were getting and decided to forego the comments section. Post the XP of what it was like to get spaced and come back on your mesh site. Come up with new sensory skins for your habitat.

I'm wondering if it occured to anyone that the rep score of a person is actually an average? More than that, an average based on reviews people posted on your "wall". Let's take an exemple nowaday You are looking on Fanfiction.net for a story to read. But you're not sure about which, so you check the reviews. If the reviews are mostly good, you'll be more tempted to read it and recommend it, right? Or avoid it if the bad reviews are convincingly argumented Look on Youtube. Pay attention to the thumb up and thumb down ratings, but also at the reviews. Now that I think about it, reviewing actions (or lack thereof) of an individual might be cause you to loose rep. How? if you're reviewing troll-y. "Yeah, you pulled the kid back in the airlock, but I still X you because I think you're shit." do you think people reading it in their friend's rep history comments will V you or X you? And not jut his friends. Bad mouthing people groundlessly in a rep system could really get you in deep shit. score 0 in a rep. Simple. People on that socnet don't know you, because you're not member on it. You may be big star on Facebook, with hundred thousands friends or fans, but completely absent on Myspace. You could have a million follower on Twitter, and enough photographies on Picasa to fill the frame amount of Avatar Extended Edition, the population of New York state has subscribed to your Youtube video but have no account on Facebook There is an ego trait called Black Mark, right? if I remember well, it influences the rep score in a big way. It's even worse than having a 0 score. People KNOW you, but you can't even defend yourself from libel because you're either banned or didn't register. And I think this kind of mark can be earned by one thing: dishonesty and felony, in a word breaking the taboo. Be it ruin a colleague's research because he's outshining you for the r-Rep, or ratting a gangmember to Medusa Shield for the G-rep. Finally on progression of a rep score. The higher it is, harder it is to augment it, but it gets easier to loose it. When you're known, and appreciate, it's harder to impress people. They expect a lot from you, they take what you provide, what you can and are willing to do for granted. So when you do something like fail to deliver, you choose NOT to for whatever reason, you disappoint people and they turn on you. Exemple of it is easy enough to find it, and it's Big Blue himself who provides it: Superman. He was loved, and espected, even adored. But when he chose to leave Earth to New Krypton with the Kandorian survivers including his biological aunt Alura, people on Earth, even (or especially) Metropolis turned their coat on him (and all kryptonians, for the matter). Something could influence rep in the biggest way, especially for people with the high scores, and especially the Fame one. And not just for the best. Meme manipulation, social engineering, mass manipulation. Best exemple for it? Mid-term elections. The party of a respected president could loose the mid-term elections because of failing to deliver as much as he promised in half the time, or because of human failing, or downright manipulations. Media could easily raise the puplic opinion by presenting true or not true facts under certain lights, propagating some times with viral advertisements, carefully chosen demographics submited to rapidly shot surveys and carefully edited news coverage

Quincey Forder wrote:

I'm wondering if it occured to anyone that the rep score of a person is actually an average? More than that, an average based on reviews people posted on your "wall". Let's take an exemple nowaday You are looking on Fanfiction.net for a story to read. But you're not sure about which, so you check the reviews. If the reviews are mostly good, you'll be more tempted to read it and recommend it, right? Or avoid it if the bad reviews are convincingly argumented Look on Youtube. Pay attention to the thumb up and thumb down ratings, but also at the reviews. Now that I think about it, reviewing actions (or lack thereof) of an individual might be cause you to loose rep. How? if you're reviewing troll-y. "Yeah, you pulled the kid back in the airlock, but I still X you because I think you're shit." do you think people reading it in their friend's rep history comments will V you or X you? And not jut his friends. Bad mouthing people groundlessly in a rep system could really get you in deep shit.

One issue I have with the standard interpretation of reputation systems is that I don't think that opinions should have a direct effect on the purchasing power of any individual. Rather, I think their actual contributions should be the only merit by which their reputation is judged... otherwise, a reputation economy has the potential to become exclusionary based on a person's demeanor. I often cite Cooper Lawrence as an example of the potential for exploitation that current reputation systems have. After one poorly-chosen action on Fox News (for which she apologized several times), she has had every single one of her books downvoted heavily by a multitude of people who have never read them. It makes for a very inaccurate system when the rating of a book can be based on one or two reviews by people who have read it, and several hundred by people who haven't. It also makes for a very bad economic model when one stupid move is all it will take for people to run you dry of economic resources, despite any positive contributions you have made. Reputation has to be based on something more concrete than the subjective view of people.

Quincey Forder wrote:

score 0 in a rep. Simple. People on that socnet don't know you, because you're not member on it. You may be big star on Facebook, with hundred thousands friends or fans, but completely absent on Myspace. You could have a million follower on Twitter, and enough photographies on Picasa to fill the frame amount of Avatar Extended Edition, the population of New York state has subscribed to your Youtube video but have no account on Facebook There is an ego trait called Black Mark, right? if I remember well, it influences the rep score in a big way. It's even worse than having a 0 score. People KNOW you, but you can't even defend yourself from libel because you're either banned or didn't register. And I think this kind of mark can be earned by one thing: dishonesty and felony, in a word breaking the taboo. Be it ruin a colleague's research because he's outshining you for the r-Rep, or ratting a gangmember to Medusa Shield for the G-rep.

A 0 rep should not be equated to no activity whatsoever. This is probably the worst element of the reputation system mechanics as written. Reputation systems are very flexible value-based systems structured around a baseline rather than a zero-point (which is what money systems are based around). The advantage of a baseline is vast; it means that the average value of reputation never changes, and inflation never exists (3-stars as the average of a 5-star reputation system will never decrease nor increase in value; a 1.0 in bittorrent will always equate to equal amounts of seeding and leeching, and will not depreciate in value). This is the biggest issue with the current reputation system. It is based around a zero-point, and has no baseline. No 3-star average score which everyone averages out to, nor a 1.0 ratio which means that people are giving as much as they get. It is basically a number-based money economy, and essentially works like a wealth mechanic from other games. Also, it's hard to say whether a black mark should be worse than a score of 0. A black mark means that you've been blacklisted by the system for one reason or another, but a score of 0 means a lifetime of no contributions and doing nothing but taking from the system. Some might view that as worse than the former.

Quincey Forder wrote:

Finally on progression of a rep score. The higher it is, harder it is to augment it, but it gets easier to loose it. When you're known, and appreciate, it's harder to impress people. They expect a lot from you, they take what you provide, what you can and are willing to do for granted. So when you do something like fail to deliver, you choose NOT to for whatever reason, you disappoint people and they turn on you. Exemple of it is easy enough to find it, and it's Big Blue himself who provides it: Superman. He was loved, and espected, even adored. But when he chose to leave Earth to New Krypton with the Kandorian survivers including his biological aunt Alura, people on Earth, even (or especially) Metropolis turned their coat on him (and all kryptonians, for the matter). Something could influence rep in the biggest way, especially for people with the high scores, and especially the Fame one. And not just for the best. Meme manipulation, social engineering, mass manipulation. Best exemple for it? Mid-term elections. The party of a respected president could loose the mid-term elections because of failing to deliver as much as he promised in half the time, or because of human failing, or downright manipulations. Media could easily raise the puplic opinion by presenting true or not true facts under certain lights, propagating some times with viral advertisements, carefully chosen demographics submited to rapidly shot surveys and carefully edited news coverage

But here's the kick: one of the key advantages to a reputation system is that it is suppose to become more rigid over time. A lifetime of positive actions on your rep should not be as easily affected by a single bad act as a much younger reputation with a smaller record. For example, let's say we're working with Amazon's rating mechanic: if you have 99 4-star votes with no others, and someone gives you a 1-star vote, your average is only reduced to 3.97... that same person with only 9 4-star votes that gets a 1-tar vote now has an average of 3.7. That same person with only 1 4-star vote that gets a 1-star vote now only has an average of 2.5. Of course, this can also be a double-edged blade. A lifetime of bad behavior cannot be corrected as easily by a few good deeds as a younger reputation with a smaller record. Some might argue this as an advantage, however... a reputation system can be less forgiving than public opinion can. Which brings me to my key point: there is no way in hell an economy can be fueled on public opinion. Public opinion is flightly, and shifts from day to day, minute to minute. An economy cannot be built on such an ever-shifting element... because even money, as crappy a system as it is, at least as stability that is relatively better than public opinion.

Rep is a system based on (trans)human perception, and well, humans are a bunch of fickle sheeps when they function within a group, any group. and they love status quo. Okay, I'm generalizing some, maybe a lot, but it's a known fact that crowd brings out the worst in people. So when lots of people gives someone a good rep, that rep will augment exponencially to a degree, to the point when the person is taken for granted by a chunk of the population, and hated by the other half. Do what they expect, and you'll keep your good rep score, because you did what they expected of you, you're within the norm, you fit in the mold your past good deed made for you, the one that earned you that rep. But do something or say something that will break the status quo, and they'll hate you for that. Sometimes, it can even be fueled by the powers-that-be. Imagine for one sec that when you were younger, you get rid of a dangerous proto-Jovian terrorist that threatened your habitat, or community. Everybody's certain he's really dead because neo-ludite groups like the Junta don't get back ups of themselves, except, unknown to anybody, this one did, and years later, he reemerges, only you has seen him resleeved and about. During the years he's been away, your habitat has become complecent, and comfy in its ways. If he was back, that comfort would go poof in a heart beat. Now imagine you try to warn your habitat that the Jovian terrorist is alive and that he's been resleeved, and that he's back. how do you think they will react? And what will they do to your rep score?