Dirichlet Reputation Systems

Reputation systems can be used in online markets and communities in order to stimulate quality and good behaviour as well as to sanction poor quality and bad behaviour. The basic idea is to have a mechanism for rating services on various aspects, and a way of computing reputation scores based on the ratings from many different parties. By making the reputation scores public, such systems can assist parties in deciding whether or not to use a particular service. Reputation systems represent soft security mechanisms for social control. This article presents a type of reputation system based on the Dirichlet probability distribution which is a multinomial Bayesian probability distribution. Dirichlet reputation systems represent a generalisation of the binomial Beta reputation system. The multinomial aspect of Dirichlet reputation systems means that any set of discrete rating levels can be defined. This provides great flexibility and usability, as well as a sound basis for designing reputation systems