The design of a configurable reputation service

Abstract

Novel trust and reputation models are frequently proposed by the research community to suit the needs of a specific environment. From the plethora of models that are available, it becomes difficult to know which features can be combined in general-purpose models suitable for commercial use. In order to address this problem, the focus of recent research on trust and reputation systems has been on the identification of common features in order to enable reuse. Organizations who need to use a reputation system within their application domain have to custom build it, which may be challenging for novice developers. This paper defines a strategy to develop a configurable SaaS reputation service that has the ability to support common features, but at the same time accommodate the unique requirements of a variety of online communities. A domain analysis reveals common features that can be arranged and re-organized using variability modeling to enable a SaaS providers to support the configuration of a SaaS reputation service.