Infected with Groogle, Hypothes.is Appears to Dumb-Down Collective Intelligence

In a Hypothes.is workshop on identity management, the group claims to have "tackled the problem" of what user identity model should be used.  The group recorded the following principles:

• there should be incentives for newcomers to obtain a positive reputation
• allocating an initial trust by default to every new user is an easy opportunity for abuse
• new users have to "pay their due" in order to prove their value to the community
• there must be mechanisms in place to make it unattractive for a user to start over with a new identity

Unfortunately, these principles are based on Grooglesque assumptions that have arisen around web systems such as StackOverflow, Reddit, Quora, Wikipedia and others.  They are not the guiding principles required to create the kind of peer review that leads to collective intelligence.

The second principle, "allocating an initial trust," presupposes the idea that such a decision -- trust or non-trust -- needs to be made by default from the moment a user joins the community.  Technologies developed outside the Groogle hot zone have shown that this needn't be the case.  Similarly, the third principle, that users must "pay their due" in order to prove their value to the community is absurd.  And again, technologies have been designed which don't require such due-paying, and yet which are able to quickly establish reliable reputation scores.

We believe that by its very organizing, "who-you-know" structure, Hypothes.is is missing the point -- but we'll discuss this further in future posts.