Paper #: Week 9 Paper 3
Title:   Reputation Systems

(1) Problems
This paper addresses the topic of reputation systems. It describes the importance of reputation systems and the current flavors of a few of them. Reputation systems collect, distribute and aggregate feedback about participants' past behaviour. This information is very useful in helping people decide whom to trust, in systems like eBay, Yahoo! Auction etc, before making a purchase from them. The paper gives a good overview of the topic. 

  
(2) New Idea and Strengths
- This paper is well written and provides a very clear high level description of Reputation systems.
- The authors walks through the problems and considerations for the design of a Reputation System. This is done in a easy to understand language.- Giving examples along the way (like Feedback Forum of eBay, star ratings of Amazon etc), the authors point out relevant advantages and disadvantages of the same to build up the need and use of a reputation system.
- Problems facing reputation systems like pseudonyms, no incentive for users to give feedback or reluctance of users to give negative feedback as well as assuring honest reporting by users are well researched and explained.


(3) Weaknesses and Extensions
- This paper is markedly different from others we have read in this class. It follows a different pattern. An overview of a topic - Reputation Systems - is given.
- The theme of the paper is not to propose a new system. It is more to describe what is already out there. The authors in the end very briefly describe their system - Reputations Research network.
- A more technical treatment of the Reputation Research Network might be a good extension.
- Another extension might be to check the statistics via experimental results of the Reputations Research network.

All in all I think this is a paper that has a different flavor to it. The authors have made a good effort in explaining what reputation systems are.it easy to read and understand.

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