GATE Trust RANKING

We all do this, implicitly or (less often) explicitly with the people around us – most of us can generally work with just about anybody, however we know that some people are just more likely to live up to their commitments than others. In business it is important to find and work with those people because business can be social and fun if it is successful but if the focus is on fun and social interactions then the business may well attract more “Franks” than “Johns” and that isn't good for business.

The GATE Trust System recognizes and codifies that ranking, ensuring that every interaction between GATE entities (Members, Vendors, Employees, and Clients) have an explicit ranking for each party. If a joint partnership between three GATE Members is formed in order to make a bid attempt within the Opportunity Knocks Auction, then GATE Village will create a ranking in each members' rank table of exactly half of the ranking scale (500) for each of the other two parties to the business transaction. As far as GATE Village is aware at this stage, these Members' relationships are new and therefore there is no basis to rank – 500 is equivalent to “not enough information to rank”.

Members, however, are individuals and may well have a history with one or more of the other parties and know that they find them trustworthy and think of them as ranked quite a bit higher than strangers. Conversely, they may have a history that suggests they are slightly less trustworthy than a stranger is likely to be, perhaps they have a habit of exaggerating their capabilities or missing deadlines or they are always late for meetings or any number of other items that suggest that their word cannot be 100% trusted. As any ranking is subjective by its very nature, not only are Members allowed to adjust their personal rankings of other GATE entities, they are asked and encouraged to do so.

These rankings automatically adjust based upon the ratings of the business transactions and interactions between GATE entities, regardless of any intervention from Members, but they are intended as a subjective appraisal of one person over another and the hope and expectation is that these rankings will be adjusted by the membership to reflect the reality as known by individual Members.

As an example, I really like Frank, and it will perhaps hurt his feelings for me to publicly state that I trust that jerk John more (I'll spend the time to make Frank understand!) but I wouldn't want other people to make bad decisions based upon my dishonesty, and I wouldn't want to be called to task for that dishonesty and sully my good reputation. I'll spend the time to rank Frank and John appropriately, and I'll even put a note in Frank's ranking telling everybody what a great guy he is – that may well be more important to some than making it to meetings on time every day (as it is for me, in fact, but that still doesn't change the fact that I can't fully trust Frank!).

Rankings are necessary for a Trust System but they are not sufficient, for one thing they are a subjective appraisal that is based upon a personal history. It fluctuates and evolves; some people's rankings will naturally increase over time, other's will decrease while still other's will have somewhat of a roller-coaster ride as life circumstances dictate. But as a single value, the point-in-time rank doesn't provide the history. A ranking of, say, 600 out of 1,000 by itself doesn't say much, but a ranking of 600 that hasn't changed in 5 years even though there have been dozens of interactions in that time says that this person hasn't been stellar in their trustworthiness – still more trustworthy than not on balance, but either each of those interactions involved some small breach of trust or there were larger breaches within some of those interactions, in either case a more negative take on a rank of “600” than somebody you've only known a few months and had a small handful of dealings with … that number is more impressive under that light.

The question before GATE is how to capture that dynamic nature of rankings. Is is enough to simply track the changes and show the plot of a person's ranking? It might be however it is difficult to see how to convince Members towards the regular ranking updates required in order to generate enough data points to be an effective measure. Rankings are inherently difficult to produce, they require a hard and honest look at the totality of an individual and in how they compare to other individuals, and even if one is willing to go to the effort on occasion, the time commitment to keep up a large network is a burden few could bear..