Good SmartMobs story on Affero, a reputation system for hackers, and the ways in which it parallels Whuffie:
One of the critical uncertainties about the future of smart mobs is whether or not workable, transportable, trustworthy reputation systems will evolve and spread. The potential for collective action in any population cannot be realized until the trust level rises above a threshold, and reputation can multiply the number of ways people trust each other. So far, eBay's and Slashdot's reputation system , or the more geeky trust metric used by Advogato have been the exemplars of reputation management systems.
Affero is a new wrinkle, one that holds some promise. Specifically created to "facilitate funding for Free Software and Open Source projects and to facilitate more effective dialogue among groups", Affero works for Usenet or listservs or message boards." You register and get a URL you can put in your .sig or on a web page. People who like your posts or feel you have contributed your time and expertise to helping them with a technical problem can click on your URL and give you reputation points or contribute money (via credit card and soon via PayPal) to your chosen cause, or to the community's default cause, or all three. Organizations like the Free Software Foundation and Electronic Frontier Foundation are popular beneficiaries.
(Thanks, Howard!)
