From: Greg Connor
Sent: Sunday, June 13, 2004 10:16 PM
<...>
I have done some thinking about how someone could put together a
"distributed reputation system". Here's a brief outline of my idea...
Problem:
Any spam blocking list is either too specific or too small/ineffective to
be noticed, or it is effective enough to get spammers to
attack/threaten/sue its owners and DDOS its servers into the stone age.
Proposal:
Make a blocking system that:
* is fed by raw data from its members
- so that there's not one person or group "making decisions"
* allows members to show their policies and see others
- so that users can see what blocks other people actually use
* can sort "policies" such as blocks according to how many use/support
them
- so that effective policies can be quickly adopted by many
* can customize a list for each user according to his criteria
- so it's not "all or nothing" - the database is not the one
"blocking
you"
* is based on signatures and a "web of trust"
- so you can quickly see policies from people you trust and whom they
trust
* is massively decentralized, using a distributed
storage/transport like
NNTP
- so that anyone can download the source, run it, and
- bam, a copy of the DB and web site
- even if the primary site gets bombed into the stone age.
Does this sound interesting to anyone? It's sort of the opposite
direction
from the reputation system being a Big Company with a Trusted
Name, but it
could work, especially if members are encouraged to upload their own
statistics.
More detailed version here:
http://www.livejournal.com/users/gconnor/105771.html
Sounds a bit like the system used by Vipul's Razor. That system accumulates
"signatures" of spam, but the way they score the contributions of
individuals implements a web of trust in a way that is not easily abused and
sounds similar to what you suggest. Take a peek at
http://razor.sourceforge.net/
--
Seth Goodman