[spottiness]

We are experimenting with reputation derived from complete anonymity since we believe that anonymity is required to maximize sincerity. In our current stage, we're manually moderating all the content generated, rejecting what looks fake based on common sense and intuition. If we ever generate traffic above a certain threshold then we have a mechanism where the content is validated by the creators themselves. Basically, the writers of opinions ("spots" for us) will have to evaluate other opinions before they can post their own, and a decision is made based on the number of coincidences among all the reviewers of a specific posting. We got the idea from previous work by CMU's Luis Von Ahn, in particular his (now Google's) ESP game.

These are examples of anonymous reviews about hotels that we have in our site:

A positive one => http://www.spottiness.com/spots/BHBZ8QJT

A negative one => http://www.spottiness.com/spots/RKTPXLJJ

Interestingly, they don't have the strong deceptive indicators...

[watmough]

"We are experimenting with reputation derived from complete anonymity since we believe that anonymity is required to maximize sincerity. "

Interesting. Where do "real name" Amazon.com reviews fit in? These make a selling point of being attributable to real people, and to me, imply sincerity, since often these reviewers seem to write reviews almost as a hobby, and often make a point of covering both good and bad aspects of a product.

There's a interesting dynamic here, since Amazon is vanishingly unlikely to harass you on the web, unlike say an ebay seller, who might well come after you if you leave anything other than a perfect review. In this case you are likely to be anonymous as far as everyone but the seller is concerned, yet being sincere may carry some risk to your own ebay account.

[spottiness]

Amazon is a good example where "real name" reviews cause a bias towards positive reviews. I believe that most people are reluctant to write negative reviews if their real names are associated with it, even if the fairness of the review is not in question. Negative reviews always put a negative halo on the reviewers, so good reviews are overwhelmingly more common. Curiously in our site, where anonymity is a requirement, also the positive reviews dominate by far, which is indicating that there's much more good than bad in the world. Cool!

[marze]

"in our site, where anonymity is a requirement, also the positive reviews dominate by far, which is indicating that there's much more good than bad in the world"

Or indicates a lot of fake reviews or something in between.

[spottiness]

You mean a lot of "positive" fake reviews, in which case people tend to fake positive opinions much more than negative ones. Definitely better than the opposite...