Opinity 

I have such a strong gut reaction against Opinity, an online service for building, searching and reviewing online reputations. It's been on my mind since I first read about it yesterday. Okay, so Opinity is only a guideline, and I'm probably being a bit unreasonable if its only meant as a quick guide, but these are the things that I've been thinking in relation to personal individual use of it (rather than businesses):

One is that it would seem to be open to stacking, sucking up, and trading, or alternatively pan out to present relatively meaningless mediocre results. Because it's directly rating people, the potential for personal attack and harm seems greater than the partisan sways to and fro on Wikipedia.

Another is that if you think about them, the catagories are not very exacting. Knowledgeable about what? - human nature, cosmology, the net? Friendly when and to whom? - performs to strangers? when woken from sleep? Respectful to whom - Lady Catherine de Bourgh? There seems little room for the nuances and complexities of human nature that you come to understand when you take the time to get to know someone and get a sense of their reputation.

It contravenes some (dignified and maybe old fashioned) idea I have of reputation being to do with the whole persona. To mark out of five in set catagories kind of degrades that. Think of 'trying to rate 'handsome is as handsome does' in broken down catagories: ' Straightness of nose, tolerableness of teeth, distance between eyes'.

And would I want to display my rating in a button? I don't think I would.