
Ask HN: Building a Trust and Reputation System - 4sellff
Hello Hacker News…<p>I am working on a [free] trust and reputation system for people who provide personal and professional services. The goal of the service is to make it easy for sellers to promote themselves and find&#x2F;connect with qualified and motivated buyers. At the same time, it will allow buyers to find&#x2F;connect with trustworthy and reputable sellers. This has been underway since March and is close to being ready. I would like any feedback on things you would like to see included.  Currently, it resembles a mashup of LinkedIn, Yelp, Upwork, Craigslist and Tumblr.<p>The prototype is based on a reputation score, which will be published for each user registered on the site. The score is dynamic and is generated from the users activity on the platform, as well as feedback from other community members [Ex. ratings and reviews]. I am interested to know what features other people would want. All suggestions are welcome, but I can’t promise they will be used :-)<p>-RonM<p>PS. Personal user privacy is a core part of the service. User information will not be monetized and traditional advertising is not permitted. Instead, we are experimenting with a new type of promotion, whereby buyers opt-in to see seller promotions and are paid directly by the seller for participating.
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cypherdtraitor
The single biggest weakness in these platforms (in my opinion) is trust in the
platform itself.

Parties with a low trust score have a vested interest in undermining the
credibility of the platform.

Users who had an experience contrary to what the trust score would indicate
may make paranoid accusations of collusion.

Then, there is the actual potential for collusion. The site has to make money,
and that is going to come from the users or from the professionals on your
site. Users simply won't pay, and professionals will only pay of they get
special treatment.

Angie's list provides a great case study into this problem. Angie's list has a
free and a premium (gold) tier for users. I don't know how they charge
businesses, but I assume businesses can pay for favorable placement.

Yelp is another example. It is much more popular (being free for users), but
is also subject to a lot more suspicion and accusations of collusion, or even
extortion, from users and businesses alike.

