Virtual badges could help build trust in crowd sourcing

Badges or other graphic symbols that convey a Web user's reputation build trust and promote participation in crowd sourcing -- a technique for channeling the wisdom of online communities, according to a software company that hosts online discussions governmentwide.

IdeaScale, a governmentwide application first employed by the White House to rank Americans' suggestions for making government more transparent, has started rolling out its own badges. Users, for instance, might earn a "verified" symbol after completing an IdeaScale personal profile. Other emblems might appear beside the usernames of participants whose ideas garner the most "yes" votes. FourSquare, a mobile application that allows anybody to check in at venues to claim prizes and discounts, has long tagged players with badges signifying, for example, the frequency with which they visit a certain restaurant.

"We think that the reputation you earn should be easily portable to other websites," IdeaScale President Rob Hoehn said. "We see crowd-sourced feedback moving into the space of user reputation."

Trustworthiness on the Internet has become a big problem, as hackers increasingly forge identities to steal money, intellectual property and other valuable information.

"It has implications for security," Hoehn said. "If I'm contributing a lot in the state of Alaska IdeaScale community and I've submitted a lot of ideas and a lot of them get implemented, I, as a moderator, want to know who those people are. But I, as a user, also want to carry that reputation with me."

President Obama is finalizing the so-called National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace -- procedures that are designed to offer people a way of verifying who they are interacting with when they conduct online transactions. The administration used IdeaScale's brainstorming tool to collect suggestions from Americans on how the ID process should work, Hoehn noted.

He said IdeaScale soon will make its badge app available for free to any developer. The idea is that the Environmental Protection Agency, NASA or a good government group can use the same criteria to bestow badges on users of their own applications. To make money, the company will sell customized versions for businesses and agencies to, for example, recognize citizens who asked President Obama questions online after the State of the Union Address.