Spring Progress Report #1

First wave of users to the site, totaling around 22 users after the first "seed" communities from the NMD 498 and Facebook. (Next wave, this week: The first round of invited "strangers", the Reddit community).

Based on survey responses and on-site feedback, the following projects have been tackled:

- Making the process of posting clearer. There are now two ways to post - a large on/off tab at the top of the page and a smaller link in the control panel.

- Simplifying the karmalgorithm: Right now, if you do something, you get karma. If you get up arrows, you get karma. If you invite, you get karma. One karma point for each transaction.

Based on survey responses and on-site feedback, the following projects will be tackled:

- Allowing for non-anonymous invitations. Some users complained that their invitational e-mail looked "spammy" and they ignored it (for testing purposes, I invited several friends without giving them a heads up.) As a result, we will minimize (yet again) the "true confidentiality" of the site by giving users the option of adding their e-mail to the invitation. This will also probably mean a higher level of karma, since it would probably yield more actual users.

- Creating a "follow this" option. A number of posters used the site once, made a few comments, or a post, and then dissolved. By sending notifications of activity to their e-mail (again, an opt-in measure) we could probably inspire more active dialogue. (This has already been set up on a testing basis for the admins, we just have to make it sortable by individual discussion).

- Customize site for portable devices. This is a backburner project, though I agree it would go a long way to keep people in the loop. We're hoping to outsource this one to a volunteer coder (or group of coders) on the site - increasingly, we're hoping to get the community involved in that aspect of the project.

- Sorting. Sorting by karma, dollar values, most recent, and user.

"Seeding Schedule"

- This week: Reddit's Trust community.

- Next week: Revisions from that round of feedback, Rhizome invitations

- Three weeks: New round of revisions, then the push for local users to invite (elevated invitation karma), press release to local newspapers.

In the meantime, I will be focusing on other communities to search for invitations, writing press release(s), and starting to flesh out, more, the theoretical research for my final paper. By spring break I want the community to be self-expanding.

Progress Report

We are working on:

- Negative Karma from downvotes.

- Writing the content, "skinning" the site.

1.

We also have stumbled upon a better way of dealing with the trust/free fall walls: By weighing each request in regards to the users karma, to determine whether it is "trust" or "free." If someone posts a reasonable request to their amount of Karma, the site will "trust" them.

2.

Should do a broad launch this week to some people recruited from Reddit/Trust. I'll also be adding some other people to populate the site. (Shoot me an e-mail if you're interested).

Milestone 3 Gantt Chart

Frequently Asked Questions

About Trust/Risk

1. What is Trust/Risk?
Trust Risk is a Web site that allows users to share resources (experiences, expertise, or money) with one another online. This means asking for helping or receiving help. The more you give to others, the more you can ask for yourself.

2. Who is behind Trust Risk?
Trust Risk is the idea of Eryk Salvaggio, a University of Maine new media and journalism student. It grew out of a similar, but different, community on Reddit.com created by anonymous users.

3. Who invited me to Trust Risk?
If you got an invitation, it’s from someone who knows and trusts you. Maybe they’ll tell you, maybe they won’t. We don’t share that information, and we won’t share your information, either.

4. Why should I trust you?
This is for you to decide. We create the network to grow organically: Everyone who is here was invited by someone who was trusted by someone else. You were invited by someone who trusts you. We hope that, when you are ready to invite someone, you weigh the decision carefully to preserve the integrity of our network.

5. How do I know people who want money aren’t lying?
You don’t. And we encourage you to use your best judgment. But we also encourage you to trust that people on the site are just like you. They might even be people you know.

6. I think this is a scam.
That’s OK. If you don’t trust us, you don’t have to participate. But we’d like to know why. If there’s a user who you think is abusing the site, or if you just aren’t comfortable, send us an e-mail. We’ll remove all of your information from the site.

7. What kind of information do you keep about me?
We know your e-mail address. The people who run the site (a staff of two) can see
- what you’ve posted to the site
- which posts you have given money to
- who you have invited to the site (e-mail only)
- your karma points

How the site works
1. What is Karma?
Karma is a number that rises when you contribute to the community. It determines how much you can ask from the community in return.
When your karma hits certain levels, you can access additional features of the site, such as the option to invite new users, or to show up on the Trust Fall side of the home page.

2. What is the difference between the “Trust Fall” and the “Free Fall?”
The “Trust Fall” is people who have higher karma, or who are making financial requests reasonable to what they have given to the community in the past.

In other words, if you have donated money to other users before, and you’re requesting an amount lower than you have given, you will be in the “Trust Fall”.

The “Free Fall” is for people who are new to the site, haven’t donated money, or who are asking for help that is disproportionate to what they’ve contributed in the past.

3. What are the numbers and arrows above each comment?
The number shows how many people thought your comment was insightful or thoughtful, which is directly factored into your karma.

The arrow is how people vote. You can use it to vote on other comments.

Be careful, though: If you leave a comment that is abusive, people will vote you down, and you will lose karma.

How can I help?
If you are interested in donating some time to Trust Risk, we welcome new ideas and coding help. Just send me an e-mail: eryk.salvaggio@gmail.com

Trust Risk: E-mail text

You’ve been invited to trustrisk.net by someone who trusts you.

Trust Risk is a Web site designed to allow people to ask for, and receive, anonymous help. This can include financial support for people in need, to advice on problems you can’t share anywhere else.

Trust Risk is based on the idea that people helping people is the most effective form of help there is. There are no registration fees. The only information we ask from you is your e-mail. All financial exchanges are arranged through sites you choose and feel comfortable with.

Everyone is anonymous on Trust Risk, but everyone is connected.
We hope you find the site useful. As you use it, you will be able to invite people you trust, too, and we’ll spread the circle wider.

(insert login info here)

Milestone notes

Gantt Chart for second milestone review. Full Version Here.

Other notes:
Beginning of research paper on Foucault, the Panopticon, and social networking, built on "Poked by the Panopticon," which will format the opening of my capstone paper for the second half.

Will has got the comment system, karma system, and paypal links working to manage a small demo with the class.

The roots of trust(risk)

In the center of town, there’s this old oak tree with a wooden box nailed to it. The box has a latch and a keyhole, and for as long as anyone can remember, townsfolk have come by and, whenever they had some spare nickels, dimes or dollars, they’d feed the oak.

No one ever knew what happened to the box. It started to get a bit of a legendary status at my school. People put money into it, but no one ever saw the thing get full. We kids called it magic. If grownups said anything at all about the box, they called it 'just one of those things', and that was that.

I never knew much about the box until a lady down the street, a widow, lost her house to a fire spurred by a candle burning without a watchful eye. The insurance man came around and talked to the fire chief and that was the end of that: The widow didn’t get a dime because the cause was ‘negligence’ and so you pay a couple of hundred thousand dollars for the sin of burning a candle while you’re in the bath tub.

When it happened, more people would make their way over to the tree every day. And then they all stopped, and then the widow was inside the grocery store buying a ham and some toothpaste instead of hanging around outside it crying with her hands out.

I asked my dad about the whole deal, and he told me he may as well tell me something because I was old enough. For telling, he didn't do a lot of talking. He takes me over to a desk and he pulls out this black key, old and narrow, and he tells me there’s something I ought to know about this town and that tree.

We go to the hardware store and dad asks for the owner, and the owner comes down and looks at the key, looks at me, and looks at my dad. Smiling, not saying a word, he retreats to the back room and about a half hour later, there’s a twin key. My dad turned it to me and handed it over like it was his genes.

We went to the oak tree that night, and he had me unlock it. Inside the old box was a black hole about four feet deep.

“It’s usually too packed to be dark,” my dad said. “Usually it’s filled with silver and copper and paper shining back the moonlight.”

I got it all then.

“We’re not the only ones with a key, are we?” I asked.

We weren’t. Dad said that his dad handed it down to him. Grandpa got a key from his boss at the shoe store when he returned a box of cash that got lost on the way to the bank. No one knows who’s got the keys, Dad said. We all get one, and we’re allowed one copy, but no one knows where they came from and no one knows where the money goes. People just throw some money in there and it stays that way until it doesn’t, and when it doesn’t you either got scammed or you served a higher good. You don’t know better either way, so you may as well just trust it.

I shut the latch and locked it closed and then slid all I had, $5.23 in change, through the narrow slot. Maybe I’ll get it back some day. Maybe you will. Maybe some kids will find a key and rob the town blind. Or maybe it’ll show up in between bites of the old widow’s leftover ham. You never know. So you might as well choose to believe.

(The above, if it isn’t clear, is a work of fiction illustrating a computer-free version of my capstone project).