Sunday, October 18, 2009

TOPIC 6 DESIGNING FOR USABILITY, SOCIABILITY AND SUSTAINABILITY




Exercise 6.3: Trust and reputation: how is it achieved?


What is trust?
Mayer, Davis, and Schoorman, 1995 define trust as “the willingness of a party to be vulnerable to the actions of another party based on the expectation that the other will perform a particular action important to the trust or, irrespective of the ability to monitor or control that other party”

it is the foundation for any relationship.(Dwyer et al). This is especially important with online communities. Martin Reed highlights the importance of trust in his article, "The importance of trust", "Right from the very first seconds of visiting your website, a user is deciding whether they can trust you. Are your articles or posts trustworthy? Can they trust you with their email address? Can they trust you to safeguard their privacy?"



All users expect an environment that is free from hackers and where your personal identity is preserved. this certainly was not the case for Big Brother fans who went on line. The official Big Brother site said they were not using encryption technology on its credit card sign up page and names and phone numbers of members were being revealed to others, TRUST!!! I don't think so! See full story Porn and privacy:Big Brother's Big Brother, at http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2007/04/23/1177180545710.html



Members of online communities often follow the leader, if the leader is sarcastic in their comments others will be too. If you want trust from your community members you have to earn it. "Communities are built on human relationships. Relationships based on lies, suspicion and deception are not healthy. You want to ensure your community is associated with trust and honesty if you want it to succeed. Give your members confidence that they can share information about themselves without being mocked or belittled. The more personal the information your members share, the more they are demonstrating their trust" (Martin Reed,2009).


I chose Facebook and MySpace, because they are popular sites and have millions of members.
Dwyer et.al (2007) states, "Facebook’s association with physical entities, i.e. universities, helps vouch for the authenticity of its members. MySpace, has a poor reputation in terms of trust. Law enforcement officials allege that MySpace is used by sexual predators to lure teenagers."
My personal experience with face book is on of a skeptic. I'm not into this form of communication and how can your information be safe! a recent news article on how your identity can be stolen is proof enough for me on the dangers of this site and I want to remove my identity from it but I can't work out how:( (SMH 'Facebook is 'gold for identity thieves' http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-national/facebook-is-gold-for-identity-thieves-20091012-gtlw.html )

So what of the pragmatists, conservatives and the skeptics? The preceeding graph shows that these people are the last to join any social networks they do not make that leap across the chasm until they are very sure. I am like these people, but looking at the graph I'm not a skeptic but more of a "Conservatives", but up the top of the bell curve. Once I'm sure of a thing I usually try it out.


reference:

Dwyer et.al 2007 Trust and Privacy: A Comparison of Facebook and MySpace http://csis.pace.edu/~dwyer/research/DwyerAMCIS2007.pdf (accessed 20/10/09)
Martin Reed The Importance of Trust March 2007 http://www.communityspark.com/the-importance-of-trust/ (accessed 19/10/09)
Martinn Reed Are you honest enough to manage an online community April 2009 http://www.communityspark.com/if-you-cant-be-honest-dont-build-an-online-community/
(accessed 19/10/09)
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