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On Trust (part I)February 4th, 2006 |
Trust is a big topic. There’s a number of definitions out there related to different domains; everything from the famous Ronald Reagan “trust, but verify” dictum applied to international arms treaties, to “trusted computing” which is not about whether something is trustworthy, but whether it behaves predictably from a software/content provider’s point of view (and not necessarily the user’s!).
In general, most people tend, of course, to assume that “trust” means what the dictionary says: someone or something on which you can depend.
But let’s take a look at what the first six definitions in the dictionary actually say:
- Firm reliance on the integrity, ability, or character of a person or thing.
- Custody; care.
- Something committed into the care of another; charge.
- The condition and resulting obligation of having confidence placed in one: violated a public trust.
- One in which confidence is placed.
- Reliance on something in the future; hope.
- Reliance on the intention and ability of a purchaser to pay in the future; credit.
Common threads emerge in these definitions: a looking-forward into the future, a sense that something of value is being held by someone else, and that somehow integrity and character are related to these two factors. In short, that integrity can be measured as whether future interactions with someone will damage something you value.
This cuts to the heart of what was being discussed in the post and resulant thread on reputation systems, which sometimes go by another name in social software circles: “trust metrics.” Perhaps the best-known advocate of truly robust trust metrics is another Raph, whose work I first became aware of years ago when researching reputation systems.
Using Neil Gaiman’s metric of “who is ranked higher on Google,” I’m Raph #2, and he’s Raph #3. There’s a Raph #1 as well, of course. This may seem like a total tangent, but it isn’t, because Google’s PageRank system is (roughly) based on reputation votes in the form of links to a site. The more inbound links, the higher-ranked you will be. Effectively, Neil Gaiman is Neil #1 and is considered to be the prime authority on Neilness, beating out Neil Young. Here Google is leveraging the social reputation of a vast network in order to build a trust metric. The thing of value is your time, and the expectation of future interaction is whether or not the page you get when you hit “I’m Feeling Lucky” is actually what you want.
A while back I attended a conference where the theme was centered on trust. The proceedings of that conference are sealed, but an official report was produced. I ended up going off on a massive mental tangent during that conference, exploring my own mental constructs regarding the words “trust” and “authority,” and thinking about it in terms of what it might mean for virtual spaces. Bear with me, because this gets a little bit abstract, and even a bit idealistic, as we go.
Let’s take the following as a truism: we’re more likely to behave nicely to people that we know we’re going to see again. There’s a body of literature surrounding this, and it’s not anywhere near simple — a number of factors play into it from many different angles. We’re also more likely to behave nicely towards people who look like us, exhibit common social signals as regards social class, and who are exuding some sort of authority. But broadly speaking, the literature indicates that an expectation of future interaction has very different results than if you don’t expect to see the person again. The classic depiction of this is Axelrod’s iterative tit-for-tat example.
It’s quite straightforward to connect this to discussions of Dunbar’s Number, aka “the monkeysphere.” So let’s take that as another truism: most people only have repeated significant interactions with a limited number of other people.
We can then turn around and think about the notion of “community standards.” These days this tends to mean a sort of terms of service document imposed from on high, but that’s actually exactly the opposite to what I mean: instead, think of it as “the standards the community imposes on itself.” These can be summed up by another word: culture.
The words culture, cultivate, and of course cult all come from the same Latin root, and this is no accident. We think of cults as brainwashing, but that is also what cultures do. They cultivate the group (get it to grow and grow strong) by inculcating (from the Latin root meaning “to force” and “to trample”) certain practices and worldviews. Deviation from these practices is punished, often by removing the support of the group from the deviant individual.
What we have here is the core of the term “peer pressure,” and also the core of the notion of “community policing.” In a group of appropriate size, as long as there is a culture established, you will see fellow members of the society enforcing the implicit rules of that society. People who deviate will be maligned, ostracized, and eventually (should there be a form of authority with this power) ejected.
This is only possible because of the promise of future interaction. This is perhaps best illustrated by recent events here on this blog. A culture has been established (and in fact, I’ve worked over years to establish it, via the manner of my participation on many different forums). Certain types of attacks and commentary isn’t welcome within that culture for a variety of reasons. When people showed up contravening that unspoken rule, other blog regulars started openly putting down the offenders. Notably, the authority (meaning me) didn’t. Some offenders promised to reform purely so they could maintain their access to the group resource: namely, the blog. Others persisted in their behavior. Eventually, the outcry was enough that the authority (again me) stepped in and enforced the unspoken rules and made them explicit. In effect, communitarian policing led to the creation of a “law.” The folks who joined but were disruptive were either normed into the group or were ejected via ostracization.
The “law” is interesting, because at that point, we move out of the realm of communitarian enforcement and into the realm of “authority-based” trust. At that point, there need not be any expectation of repeated interaction. You have a level of trust that the guy in front of you in the checkout line is not going to turn around and stab you in the eye with his Snickers bar because of mediated trust — you are relying on the authority above the both of you to keep that from happening.
Obligatory game-related point to make: This is in fact why in my community relations policies manual at SOE I recommend not having a “general game discussion” forum — by creating a community whose natural shared interest is so large, you rapidly grow beyond Dunbar’s Number, and thus rapidly create an environment where you must appeal to authority in order to get a civil environment. In other words, an overly large forum or game will have greater policing problems, because smaller groups are more effective at policing themselves via peer pressure. This is why the SWG forums were partitioned into so many smaller groups.
I also believe this is why the level-based segmenting of player populations into cohorts and “cozy worlds” is such a powerful dynamic, and why levelless systems have to find a compensating mechanic. Dunbar’s number is about our support system, not just about our knowledge sphere. Being outnumbered by the big bad world is uncomfortable. A big anonymous world is not as emotionally satisfying as a tight-knit community of reasonable size.
And all of that just covers the very first sentence in the notes I set out to transcribe. We have seven pages of notes to go! At this rate, I’ll finish in 2008.
Still to come in part 2 (and beyond, if need be):
- “The relay problem” with authority appeals
- “Trust is not transitive, but mistrust always is.”
- Can we architect communitarian models that resist homogeny?
- “The more distant the authority, the higher the burden of proof is.”
- Is there such a thing as bottom-up authority?
- What’s the difference between trust and faith?
- Yes, of course we will talk about LambdaMOO!
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[...] I tried to make my third content chapter, but it’s a toughie. What’s worse, it covers much of the same ground that Raph is covering here and here, but from a different angle (and much more tersely).You see, there’s a couple of connected “bits” here. “Trust” is one thing. “Interaction/Friendship” are another thing. “Exploration” is another thing. But all three are intrinsically tied to social networking.One of my favorite game designs (of mine) is a game called “Spider Space”. Utilizing a unique resource allocation system, it encouraged a kind of social networking which would hopefully lead to high-trust environments. But more than that, it would lead to high-interaction (friendship) environments and high-exploration environments.Because all three of these things are related, and all three of them are related to content creation.A social network is one of the kinds of player generated content that all massively multiplayer games have. 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And chances are, it’s a meaningless blip, since it is a waste of time compared to the very best quests and cars.The important part of making a car or a quest is when people say, “that’s really cool! Have you thought about putting in hamsters?” or “that sucks, I bet I can make a better one.”That’s the content. The content is the part of the game which draws the player into making the little pieces of piffle. They aren’t the best pieces of piffle. They’re probably wastes of time. But the act of creating them and being challenged to do it better - that’s the content.That content is enabled by social networks more than any other thing. You can encourage players to do it better with game mechanics, of course. Most games do this - “levelling up was cool, wasn’t it? Now try to level up again!” But that’s a shallow method. 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Interaction is, if anything, more important. People will learn who to trust through repeated interactions, even if they don’t have any real “trust support” system. But people who don’t interact won’t interact. So your system has to reward interaction. Not just creating content, but finding content others have created. Not just talking, but talking meaningfully about content. This needs to be balanced, however, because it can easily lead to swamping popular creators. Hence…C) Membership Control. Your social network is only a help to you at very specific sizes. If it is too small, it is useless. Too large, it is full of noise and gets in your way more than helping you create content.Therefore, you need to have a way of (A) getting people to have significant social networks and (B) keeping them from being assaulted by every fanboy that notices them.The so-called “LFG” syndrome falls under here. People without an adequate social network stand by the sidelines, unable to proceed until they get some useful interactions. So they shout, “Looking for group”, and cross their fingers.You need to have something that draws people into social groups. Something which makes even useless newbs into something useful. Simultaneously, you have to have something which gently keeps people from swamping one content creator - both for the sake of that creator and to allow for greater numbers of content creators.Spider Space had all of these. These ideas really aren’t new to me, but they are the subject of chapter 3 of content creation. However, this chapter doesn’t taste all polished and textbooky, does it?Hmmm. [...]
[...] Somewhat related to the Reputation in MMOGs article and commentary from last week, Raph Koster has a two part piece looking at webs of trust and how trust is relayed through communities. [...]
[...] http://www.raphkoster.com/?p=310In part I I gave the basic grounding for my take on the issues of trust, reputation, and policing. Now I want to dig into some of the deeper issues there. [...]
[...] Raph Koster (former UO and SWG developer) has an interesting post on trust on his website: http://www.raphkoster.com/?p=308 It might be somewhat relevant to your theory, especially this part: Quote: [...]
[...] Tepper writes, "I fully expected this unique form of in-game democracy that we use, to breed an ever-growing, increasingly intrusive government, just as real-world democracy often does. In fact, one big advantage I saw to Tellings was the chance to undo the implosion that I thought was inevitable. The culture that evolved in ATITD was just the opposite, and I still don’t have a good explanation. The force of law has always been applied with the lightest touch. And it’s not just in law that Egypt has been cautious…In three years we’ve elected about 20 Demi-Pharaohs, players with the power to permanently exile up to 7 of their countrymen. And in three years, that power has never been used…" I don’t think I’m nearly as surprised as Tepper seems to be. Partly because I think his expectation here invokes a common form of cyberlibertarian narrative about contemporary American politics that is at the least an over-simplified hypothesis about the development of post-1945 liberal democracies, that refers implicitly to some kind of universal tendency of individuals to surrender freedom to authority. Partly because, as some players have also observed, the size of the playerbase of A Tale in the Desert promotes a more trusting and close-knit community (an issue Raph Koster has been writing about lately). Partly also, as some ATITD players have noted, there’s a selection filter here, that ATITD is a boutique product far less likely to attract the kinds of griefers and antisocial players whoWarhammer Online von Mythic Entertainment. players in other synthetic worlds might desperately wishMMORPG, dass im Jahre 2005 noch whrend der Entwicklung eingestellt wurde. to control or expel, and far more likely to attract people with a lively interest in participating in the political affairs of their synthetic world. Link: Pharaoh’s Expectations 150)?150:this.scrollHeight)”> __________________ The tools suck! — Raph Koster [...]
[...] Anonymous: Raph Koster On Trust at MMOG Nation [...]
[...] Partly because, as some players have also observed, the size of the playerbase of A Tale in the Desert promotes a more trusting and close-knit community (an issue Raph Koster has been writing about lately). Partly also, as some ATITD players have noted, there’s a selection filter here, that ATITD is a boutique product far less likely to attract the kinds of griefers and antisocial players who players in other synthetic worlds might desperately wish to control or expel, and far more likely to attract people with a lively interest in participating in the political affairs of their synthetic world. [...]
[...] On Trust (part I) [...]
[...] Read Part I Read Part II Read A side note [...]
[...] We might also ask ourselves whether the communitarian model is in fact a polite fiction we sell ourselves; Tim Burke touched on this in his comments on Part I. Is there such as thing as true bottom-up authority? After all, communitarian ideals are driven by consensus, but in practice consensus, particularly in small groups, is driven by strongmen, by natural leaders, by persuasive techniques. This is precisely why the development of things like secret balloting was such a core driver of human socil development. [...]
[...] There was a long discussion about player trust at Raph’s site a few months ago, so I won’t open up that can of worms again, and he is even skirting the edge of this topic today over on his site.* [...]
[...] - Three part analysis of Trust, with many comments, and applied to gaming worlds in particular, at http://www.raphkoster.com/2006/02/04/on-trust-part-i/ [...]
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