HM: …right and to me reading what you write & post on a blog shows me things you have *done* … gives me data to work with.

CH: “Also, I would hate to be judged by your criteria! I expect it would not give a faithful representation of my character. And I REALLY need to sell these tickets…”

HM: well, firstly reading readear i’d certainly get a sense of who you are. but again, the point is available data: if you are not supplying good data online, then I have no way of evaluating you if i don’t know you some other way. if i’ve got data i can make a decision about trust.

I had an epiphany some years ago. A man I had a lot in common with (background, music, one of the same group of friends) betrayed my trust in a quite spectacular way. And my group of friends were sympathetic, but certainly did not judge him. So I judged them, and left the group.

And someone I had always considered too dull to be of interest (not in my group, bad taste in music etc) really came through for me.

So, I decided to *try* and take people on what they *did*, rather than the face they chose to show me. To basically trust people until they did something undeserving of trust. Not much good when deciding whether or not to buy rugby tickets, I grant you, but it is the Way of LibriVox, or so it seems to me.

Also, I would hate to be judged by your criteria! I expect it would not give a faithful representation of my character. And I REALLY need to sell these tickets…

not all that much, except that school and gym don’t imply much knowledge of the person, whereas an online presence can (sometimes) contain all sorts of information that is helpful in establishing what sort of person a stranger is (they sing in a choir, work in a lab at UCLA, hosted a halloween party (dressed as minimouse), volunteer with SPCA … etc. just sharing a gym or a school implies very little actual knowledge about a person. family probably a little more.

also there is the don’t tread on people in our shared circle idea – if you do something dishonest with me, then people at the gym/school/family are likely to hear about it. The web’s like that too: I will link to a jerk who does something bad online, to let people know about it.

but the point is that absent those other traditional contexts, a web presence allows me to know something about a person I would otherwise know nothing about.

“And trusting someone based on their web presence seems akin to trusting someone because they belong to your own socio-economic group. A kind of digital country club.”

I think that’s unfair.

I’m not saying that “if you have a blog I will trust you.” I’m saying, “if you have a blog, and I can read it and get a sense of who you are, I have a way of evaluating whether or not I should trust you.” If you don’t have a blog, then I have *nothing* to go on. rather than something.

the web itself *is* functionally exclusive and class-based, sure, but it’s still providing tons of good data that otherwise is absent, that lets me evaluate choices, about people, vacations, restaurants, books etc…but if the data I need is not online I have to get it some other way: in the case of deciding whether or not to trust a stranger, I have no data at all.

A. I can trust them, I can see the kind of person they are from the web

and

B. I can trust them – they went to the same school/university as me.
or I know their family, or We belong to the same gym

I have been let down more often by people who deserved my trust in every way, than by strangers. But, anyway, there seems to be no shortcut to deciding on someone’s trustworthiness – even if you have known them for years.

And trusting someone based on their web presence seems akin to trusting someone because they belong to your own socio-economic group. A kind of digital country club.

@frank: it depends a little on what the opinions were, or what the photos were like. it cuts both ways: i could just as easily land on the page of someone who seemed untrustworthy when I read his/her blog. the point is rather that digital presence allows us to evaluate people in a way that we cannot in any way except “getting to know someone.”

so digital presence does not imply trust, but it allows it.

oh and: i think the digital vs physical gravitation has plus and minus, but thinking of my world in Montreal, much of my digital trust actually applies to people who are in some sense neighbours. still, i worry that we pay too little attention to the “real world” and that’s dangerous, which is why things like barcamps and yulblog etc are great – we destroyed the physical connections people had to community; reinvented them online; and then brought them back to our physical communities. which is kinda cool.

It’s an amazing point that you have hit on. One advantage of the online community is that you gravitate towards like-minded people as opposed to your neighbors who are in your world because of location. Similar to the difference between friends who you seek out and family who you are stuck with.

http://www.digg.com/security/Trust_on_the_web