I didn't say I upvoted them, I just said that I assumed they were correct. :) – Robert Harvey Jan 21 at 23:28
There is a difference in trust in an answer (because you have the knowledge to say something about it), and trust in an answer (because it is explained well, and the author is trustworthy). The StackExchange reputation mechanism does not distinguish between the two, and therefore it cannot be told what prevails and how a certain reputation is constituted. I do not think it is a big problem, but it is quite interesting what happens when for instance a user does not see the reputation of a person (who gives an answer) until he votes for an answer. That is one way to test it.
Another way to test this is by sending 3 groups of 50 persons an email with a question and two answers. For all groups, the question and answers are the same. Each person must choose the better answer.
- Group 1 gets a question and two answers. The author of answer A has a high (artificial) reputation. The author of answer B a low reputation.
- Group 2 idem, but other way around.
- Group C idem, but without the reputation of the authors included.
The persons have to be familiar with the reputation system, otherwise the reputation does not make sense to them. There are different ways to extend such an experiment: showing/not showing the votes for an answer, looking at the reputation of the persons and see if there are correlations between own reputation and trust in another reputation, etc.
I have also thought of another, similar approach to testing the influence of accumulated reputation and the trust it seems to convey. Show a video to the 3 groups and ask them to rate the video. The first group is not shown a rating, the second group is shown an average high rating of the video, and the third group is shown an average low rating in the video. What you try to decipher here, is how much an existing reputation/rating influences choice, trust, and perceived value. A video is not the same as a person, clearly, but I think the same internal mechanics play a role here (I’m not a psychologist.. anyone?).
The underlying assumption is of course that people are guided by other people, preferably exemplary people (or icons), and that the trust in SO-metrics allow for ‘not having to think myself’, hence consuming less energy and is therefore a preferred strategy for many people in such communities. There is of course nothing wrong with this, but it of course puts some requirements on the reputation system: the reputation people trust in must not be able to predict the behaviour of an reputed agent, at least when the agent has a high reputation. It means: I value my high reputation > I have been willing, and will be willing to put effort in finding answers that are valuable > therefore my intention is right. Even though intention does not equal quality of the answer, it comes quite close, because wrong/bad answers will degrade your reputation.