We've fundamentally redefined the way Second Life residents' reputations are determined, documented and viewed. This page is fairly long, but please read it so you understand what all the pieces are and how they fit together. So, how does it all work?

Second Life's built-in ratings system is just too lacking. In contrast, we offer a community portal for the Second Life community to define and view the reputation of any resident in much more concrete terms.

We built our reputation system around three inter-related technologies:

• Public Reputation Profiles
• Feedback
• Trust Networks

Lets take a look at these pieces, and how they tie together to help the Second Life community define the reputations of its residents and avoid residents with bad reputations.

Public Reputation Profiles

Every Second Life resident who has had feedback submitted to Real Reputations about them has a public profile. It contains everything that the community has to say about a resident. Many public profiles are also inter-connected via the global trust network (more on this below). Public profiles are easy to browse, search and jump between.

After you join Real Reputations, you can find the URL to your own public profile on your account page. We welcome you to introduce yourself to residents who view your public profile by adding an "About Me" section to it. This is also done from your account page. We also encourage you to share your public profile link by placing it in your in-world Second Life profile, or anywhere else that you would like people to be able to learn more about your reputation.

Feedback

The core of our reputation system revolves around feedback. We've broken free from the Second Life status quo of meaningless rating numbers, and developed a robust and full-featured feedback system that is designed specifically to compliment virtual worlds like Second Life. Any resident can use our web interface, or more commonly, our easy to use in-world HUD, to leave feedback about any other resident they meet (it does not matter if the other resident is a Real Reputations member or not).

This feedback shows up in the Real Reputations public profiles of the resident who left it and the resident it was left about. Each feedback contains the following data:

• The name of the resident that left the feedback (with a link to their public profile).
• The name of the resident that the feedback was left about (with a link to their public profile).
• A flag to show the nature of the feedback (positive or negative).
• Summary information to show how many total feedbacks both residents have received, and what percentage of those feedbacks is positive in nature.
• The content of the feedback (a detailed explanation of why the feedback was left, and/or any other comments that the resident leaving the feedback has about the other resident).
• Optionally, a comment. The user that the feedback is about can submit a comment about the feedback. If a comment was submitted, it will show up along with the feedback.

Your public profile also contains the following feedback summary data:

• The total number of feedbacks left about you, and what percentage of them are positive in nature.
• The total number of feedbacks that you have left about other residents, and what percentage of them are positive in nature.

You are welcome to leave any feedback that you want about any other resident you meet, but please keep the following in mind:

• You may leave only one feedback about a resident.
• Your feedback cannot be vulgar or obscene.
• You may use only one account to leave feedback about a resident (no alts).
• Once left, feedback can only be removed when both parties agree to remove it.

In order to leave feedback, you first need to join Real Reputations and get your free in-world HUD. The HUD will, among other things, allow you to leave feedback about nearby residents or the owners of nearby objects.

Trust Networks

Detailed feedback about residents is a terrific step forward from Second Life's built-in rating system, but it just can't show a complete picture by itself. We've significantly boosted the usefulness of feedback by developing an important technology on top of our feedback system that we call trust networks. Trust networks tie multiple public profiles together based on who each resident knows and trusts.

Your public profile contains the following information about your trust network:

• The total number of residents who know and trust you.
• The total number of feedbacks that everyone in your trust network has received, and what percentage of them are positive in neature.
• A link to view your trust network.

When a user views your trust network, they will see the following about each resident in it:

• The name of the resident (with a link to their public profile).
• The total number of feedbacks that the resident has received, and what percentage of them are positive in nature.

We hope you can see how trust networks paint a much better picture of a resident's overall reputation than feedback alone. They do this by allowing the community to see the reputation (individual and combined) of everyone who knows and trusts a resident. If a resident builds a bad reputation, they will find other residents reluctant to join their trust network, and will end up being cut off from the global trust network.

You can add a resident to your trust network using your free Real Reputations in-world HUD. The HUD will send a message to any nearby resident you choose, asking if they'd like to join your trust network. If they agree, they will be added to your trust network, and you will be added to theirs. Keep in mind that trust networks are a two-way street, and only invite residents that you really do know and trust to join your trust network. Their actions in Second Life will have an impact on your reputation.

You can also remove a user from your trust network at any time, and their approval is NOT required. To do this, view your trust network and click the "remove" link next to the resident you want to remove. The resident will be removed from your trust network, and you will be removed from theirs. Keep in mind that trust networks are a two-way street, and only remove a resident from your trust network if you want to be removed from theirs as well.