How could you rank the validity of a celebrity encounter

December 24, 2007 4:18 PM

I once read a book about a couple of autograph hounds who ranked celebrities by their willingness to meet with fans and sign autographs. If this system were ported to the web and opened to the public, allowing anyone who's had contact with a celebrity to rank their experience, how could you validate that the encounter actually happened?

It's impossible to know whether a person is lying or not, but could you create a system that lends credibility to users with more celebrity encounters? Why would more encounters equate to more credibility? It's an endless stream of questions!

FOCUS: If a site were based on ranking celebrity encounters, how could you validate the truthfulness of the experience?

posted by bjork24 to computers & internet (5 comments total)

You couldn't.

Such systems can always be gamed. This is really no different than the problem search engines face. Years of effort to prevent it, and they still get gamed by "SEO" folk.

When you're online, sincerity can always be faked.
posted by Steven C. Den Beste at 4:38 PM on December 24, 2007

could you create a system that lends credibility to users with more celebrity encounters?

No. What's to stop me from making up every single encounter or just every third or all after my first year in your community? Furthermore, just because I've meet more celebs, it doesn't mean that I'm going to be more honest the other, less celeb seeing people.


Why would more encounters equate to more credibility?

It doesn't, see above. The problem here is the lack of relevant and valid credibility indicators, i.e. processable data that could tell us something about the fans' credibility. Compare this with Academia, where your grades, schools, work, research, articles, how often you work is referenced, etc., are all indicators of your credibility. Also, in Academia there's the risk of severe punitive actions if you are found guilty of fraud or deception. Heck, entire careers could be tarnished by accusations of plagiarism when some poor soul forgot to add one of two references. How are you going to punish anonymous people on the Internet? What do they got to lose if they break the rules?


If a site were based on ranking celebrity encounters, how could you validate the truthfulness of the experience?

Franky, I wouldn't want to get involved in such a project as I don't see anything good coming out of it, just gossip about famous people. I will, however, share my thoughts on the subject as I see this as an interesting challenge within the domain of social computer science.

First of all, people can't be anonymous. Personal details (name, location, photo) are really required if there's to be any credibility what so ever. By making people tell who they are, they put their reputation on the line, which should prevent at least ***some*** from making stuff up. Also, people tend to be more than happy to talk about celeb encounters as it boosts their egos, so there should be more incentive to not be anonymous. But what's to prevent people from creating fake identities? Ah, read on.

Secondly, I would implement some sort of system where each user can vouch for the credibility of other users. This way, people can help "build" up each other but always under the risk of messing up their reputation if they frivolously vouch for people. To further minimize vouching abuse, I would make everyone specify exactly why they are vouching for someone and specify their relationship, the latter sorta like Facebook does when you want to add a friend.

Evidence in the form of photos showing fan+celeb would increase some one's credibility. However, this would probably lead to a skewed selection of encounters in bias of the more positive ones since photos usually aren't taken when obnoxious fans/celebs are involved.


If you are interested in a more research-oriented aspect on the topic, search Google Scholar for online reputation and similiar keywords.
posted by Foci for Analysis at 5:26 PM on December 24, 2007

This is an issue Gawker Stalker (which plots celeb sightings, not signatures) faces, and the editor has mentioned that they "try" to weed them out their best, but definitely can be gamed.

(Especially since a few individuals take the time to purposefully game them.)
posted by disillusioned at 6:19 PM on December 24, 2007

Evidence in the form of photos showing fan+celeb would increase some one's credibility.

That's it right there. Have two categories on your site: Verified and Unverified. There's a site...of questionable content.. that I belong to which requires users to upload a photo of themselves, full body shot, holding a sign which has their user number on it. Do something like that as your first level of verification. Call them...hmm.. Trusted Contributors, or something. This is to verify they are who they claim to be. Note: these photos are only seen by tech wonks on the back end. The users can still be functionally anonymous to the rest of the userbase.

Your next level of verification involves photo (or, better, video) recording of celebrity encounters. Yeah, Photoshop.. that's why you set a threshold before people become, say, Respected Contributors. After that, community dynamics (as we see right here on MeFi) will take care of the idiots and gamers for the most part.

That being said, take a lesson from MeFi. Moderate early, moderate often. But don't fall into the trap that Mattamyntex has avoided: culling what you don't personally like. Create guidelines, mod strictly to those guidelines, amend the guidelines as necessary but with full transparency to your userbase.
posted by dirtynumbangelboy at 6:29 PM on December 24, 2007

Oh yeah, paid membership helps weed out the casual morons. $5-10 seems good. Accept CC & Paypal.
posted by dirtynumbangelboy at 6:30 PM on December 24, 2007