Reputation and Quality Indicators to Improve Community Governance

Abstract

Social innovation presents new opportunities for participation and inclusion. Yet, many social innovation projects or initiatives are characterised by a power law distribution, where a large majority of contributions are provided by a very small portion of people. Besides, most of these initiatives lack a systematic structure and incentivization mechanism, but merely rely on irregular volunteer-driven participation. This not only impinges upon their long-term sustainability, but also significantly reduce their ability to scale over time.

Prior attempts at resolving these issues have been focusing for the most part on hierarchical structures or transaction-based models that mainly replicate traditional market logics. We propose here a new model of distributed governance for social innovation communities, based on a gratitude-based reward and reputation system that could promote inclusion and participation within these communities, without incurring the costs associated with centralized decision-making and without engaging into the distortive effects of today’s market-based transactions.

Keywords: reputation, reward systems, social innovation, community governance, participation, inclusion