Restoblog

This is the question I hear most often when I show someone the site, and the one that I spend the most time thinking about.

If the site is driven by ratings submitted by surfers, how do I know that a single surfer with an axe to grind, or a job to sell, isn’t going to skew the ratings?

Well, first off, one user gets only one chance to rate a job. They can’t grudge something 100 times.

Secondly, each user needs to verify their profile through a real email account.

This is a very mild barrier to entry, I admit. So someone who’s determined enough could create 100 accounts with 100 real email addresses and log in and out 100 times to grudge a job 100 times?

Not quite.

While the site may look simple, there’s a lot happening in the programming behind the scenes to prevent someone from doing this. And I’m keeping an eye on how the site is used so I can keep one step ahead of any determined faker.

Also, a brand-new user doesn’t have the same weight as a more established user. Again, this is built into the programming of the system so that it can recognize a member of the community as opposed to someone trying to “game” the system. And again, this programming is constantly being tweaked.

The whole idea is to build a site that rewards legitimate participation of its members and create a strong online ESL community, while weeding out the scammers.

Will it work? It should. If it doesn’t I will change it.
I didn’t invent these ideas myself, I learned them from studying social software.

But seeing how these ideas are still new and this technology untried, anything could happen. It’s still very cutting-edge.

Should be interesting to watch.