Give me some Gorb
Now here’s a crazy idea. If you’ve ever read damn near anything by Cory Doctorow, you’ve probably heard of Wuffie, or reputation currency, which is common to everyone. A new website, Gorb, is putting forth their hat in this ring.
I’ve only just registered for the service more as a social experiment than anything else. You know me. Always trying the new stuff. I know I’ve got my fans and my detractors out there (some guy called me a “dick” the other day. The nerve…), but I figure that — regardless of the tone of some recent segments (coughcoughKarencough) — this is a pretty friendly crowd towards me. But as I say, we shall see…
The interface is a bit more kludgy than I’d like, and I can’t see any easyt way to link directly to a page where you can rate me. Well… wait a tick. This might work. Maybe that’s by design.
March 14th, 2007 at 9:24 am
So… what’s the point? What do you do with Gorb other than attain a good karma rating?
March 14th, 2007 at 11:23 am
I am glad you joined. You are right about an invite module to invite others to your page. It is a bit hidden and we are working to make it more visible. The button to access it is above the GORB Colors called “Email Page”. If you are registered you can also do this easily through the Promote your GORB Section.
I personally wanted the experience to be a bit disjointed. I believe that in order to rate you, people need to know @ least your email address. In most cases email addresses are a private matter and are usually exchange @ a personal level. We want to encourage honest and quality ratings by increasing the possibility of personal contact. So yes it is by design.
There are plans to do many exciting things in the near future from many of the lessons learned
in these first weeks.
I am the experience designer for the team, but everyone has contributed in the system definition. There are already a few areas in the redesign process for usability purposes.
March 14th, 2007 at 3:54 pm
Magess,
I have no idea what other purpose it may have. Not that that is a bad thing. It’s kinda like research science — sometimes the best work and most world-changing items aren’t done with a direct goal in mind. Who knows how it will be used. But quantifying karma does sound like a good start.
Francisco,
Thanks for posting. The biggest challenge (from my vantage point) is reconciling the many different emails a person has. Like many folks involved in new media, I have many different email addresses — all of them primary. Since I’m th same person on all, I think those should be able to be rolled up to on, once I tell you all the email address that I’m known by.
Totally see where you are coming from on the Purposeful Hurdles. Does cut down on the “click here to rate me 10.0″ factor, which is a big problem. So maybe the widget displays my Gorb score, but anyone who decides to rate *still* has to know my email address. Of course, I could tell them what to put in there in some accompanying text near the image on my site. But that still may be enough of a hurdle to keep it more honest than single-clicks.
March 15th, 2007 at 11:53 am
We are actually working on many of this ideas. Linking emails is something we have in the pipeline and has been discussed. Linking is not the real issue, it is fairly easy. The biggest issue is unlinking when your let go of an email and it becomes available to others. Widgets are also coming. THey are designed and will offer several different options and designs
Keep in touch!