My brain ain't so big: Why remembering is not enough.

I recently re-read the classic essay by Clay Shirky, A Group Is Its Own Worst Enemy. But one point stuck out to me: reputation needs a memory.

If you want a good reputation system, just let me remember who you are. And if you do me a favor, I'll remember it. And I won't store it in the front of my brain, I'll store it here, in the back. I'll just get a good feeling next time I get email from you; I won't even remember why. And if you do me a disservice and I get email from you, my temples will start to throb, and I won't even remember why. If you give users a way of remembering one another, reputation will happen, and that requires nothing more than simple and somewhat persistent handles.

Mabye this is fine for a normal sized social group, (which happens to be about 150) but what if what you want is reputation system for eBay, or PayPal, or the whole web? Even if I could interact with all those people, I certainly couldn't remember them all. What is needed is a group memory, where each person can store and publish memories of their ecounters.

Delicious does this to a limited degree, recording people's memories of good websites. But with Outfoxed I hope to take the idea much further, allowing all kinds of memories to be recorderd, and for you to easily draw on the memories of your friends and friends' friends...

That's the reputation system I want.