Comments on: Not All Opinions Are Equal

By: etbe

etbe — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 03:17:31 +0000

http://www.anotherblogger.com/2008/04/24/taking-a-stand-openid/
Kevin: That’s an interesting post about only commenting via OpenID (I’ve included the full URL above as I prefer to avoid tinyurl services as much as possible).

Reputation is difficult to measure unless there are only a small number of hops. Advogato seems to have the most functional system (not that it’s great, but it is working and has the data). However most people don’t pay much attention to it.

By: Kevin Fox

Kevin Fox — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 18:45:34 +0000

Excellent post. It is interesting to note that while some sites are requiring people to login with verified identities (see http://Ma.gnolia.com) some people are refusing to comment unless the site accepts OpenID (http://twurl.cc/4sx)

There is an excellent description of everything that goes into someone’s identity (beyond OpenID), including mediating trust, here: http://blogs.oracle.com/talkingidentity/2008/05/05

OpenID is really meant to be the authentication layer in the identity stack. There have been attempts for creating reputation, sites like Jyte use cred points, but no one has hit a home run yet. It will be good times when we can have a truly portable identity that includes reputation.

Cheer,
Kevin

By: etbe

etbe — Sat, 13 Sep 2008 12:28:42 +0000

AlphaG: Proprietary software has no intrinsic value as recent EULAs tend to prohibit resale, and in any case when the new version gets released no-one will want the old version.

As for getting comments for nothing, regardless of how much you know about the author they are still free. Also as I noted in the section about domain specific expertise, it is possible to be known as an expert in one area while not being known as an expert in others (in fact some people are known for being an expert in one field and a jackass in others). ;)

Incidentally in case you didn’t realise, you are anonymous. Your email address does not match a google search (I won’t reveal email addresses related to blog comments but I do a google search on people who comment) and from a quick scan none of the top 10 google search results for “AlphaG” seem to match with what you are writing on my blog. An anonymous identity used serially in one place remains anonymous. If you were to get a blog with the same name and link to it in future comments then your anonymity would be reduced.

Your comments are of better quality than the average. So in my estimation of comment quality, a comment from you gets more weight than other anonymous people based on your track record in my blog.

By: AlphaG

AlphaG — Sat, 13 Sep 2008 11:01:12 +0000

Anonymous comments = free software, no intrinsic value as you got it for nothing

By: etbe

etbe — Sat, 13 Sep 2008 09:58:16 +0000

Kristy: I’m glad you found it useful. It was not my intention to encourage people to refuse anonymous comments, although I understand why they do.

By: Kristy A. Bennett

Kristy A. Bennett — Sat, 13 Sep 2008 03:06:54 +0000

G’day Russel!

Thank you so much for this article. I have linked to it on the contact page of my personal personal site: http://behindthescenes.kristy.id.au/ as further reading as to why I do not allow anonymous comments. (Doing this has certainly removed most of the weeds from my bed!)

Cheers!