The Wuffie sourceforge project was opened on June 15th, 2004. This page exists to ground initial discussions and establish beginning steps for those who may be interested in, or who have been invited to, participate in setting goals and developing initial philosophy. As of this writing, most of what is presented is subject to change as feedback becomes available.
For those who haven't guessed, this project has drawn its name from the system described in Cory Doctrow's Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom.
The Whuffie project is intended to develop an open communications standard by which software can be used to establish reputations among individuals.
For the purposes of this project, an individual is considered to be a specific human being, and reputation is considered to be a measure of how much an individual's relationships are valued by other individuals. Less abstractly, this is to be a way by which software can communicate what Jane thinks of Jim, regardless of how many email addresses or telephone numbers they use to communicate, and without concern over Jim and Jane having a bad day yesterday or a good day today.
This project is intended to provide a useful communications tool that developers might use as inspiration for new applications or to enhance existing applications. To that end, the project needs to define a simple standard that assumes as little as possible about client behavior beyond standardized communication. How reputation is measured and with whom clients interact, in particular, should be outside the standard's scope.
This should not limit efforts to direct users toward decent behavior, or to influence the types of interactions implicated by use of the standard. For example, if false identification or artificial inflation of reputation can be made difficult by design, it should be. If by design the project can encourage people to be decent to everyone rather than decent to some and not to others, it should do so. Because this may influence the ways in which people interact, it will be necessary to consider philosophically the type of society we wish to encourage.