Anti-Douchery: Federated Personal Reputation

The general user experience on buy/sell sites like Kijiji is just terrible. Such a bad lingering taste it leaves. I forget the good and clean sales. I remember the lethargic, life wasting exchanges and impersonal feeling of being dragged through the email gutter with nothing but bitterness to show for it.

I’ve been trying to sell an obsolete monitor for a few weeks now. And by “trying” i mean I invested about 15 minutes posting an ad, and have since crossed my fingers and hoped for the best. I decided not to go the eBay route because packaging and shipping is mildly intimidating (even though i’ve done it before with some success). The perceived eBay barrier was enough to convince me to go the Kijiji route, as there is little friction to kick off the process (and kudos to them for that).

I posted it as “make me an offer”, knowing a ballpark in mind. I had one pleasant bite in the first week which was mutually dismissed. Then along came the “too good to be true” bite that reminds me what is broken with the system. There is no reputation. Buddy wants it, agrees on a price, and a pickup date. Then he’s not there on the date — an honest mistake, so we agree to a subsequent date. He had the good will to cancel 12 hours before when he couldn’t make it, and agreed to another date. He cancelled that within 12 hours as well. When trying to arrange another meet, he is now ghosting.

There is something here akin to normal dating. If you don’t reach a certain level early, perhaps you’ve missed your chance. As if there are only so many moments for you to snag on to that nugget of connection, and then it passes you by… or at least the friction or scaffolding you need to get back there becomes too much, and in a subconscious value judgment you decide it is not worth the perceived benefits.

And so, the monitor remains on my dining room table, a permanent guest to dinners i have yet to host, a guest that lingers long past what is socially acceptable, and a constant reminder of a failed connection.

Of course, woe is me, first world problems, etc., but still something whose grating i would like to see removed.

My idea is a personal reputation service where expectations could be better set, and give me an avenue to shit all over people like this to feel time wasn’t completely wasted. Kijiji could build their own, but it’s about time that we use identity providers like Facebook/Google/Twitter/etc., and someone builds an anonymized reputation service linked to the identities and to the services like Kijiji to bring it all together. When buddy behaves in this manner, there is some accountability for lack of commitment and general douchiness. I could rate them (anonymously on both sides), and see their scores and history, and have expectations up front if the experience would drag me through the gutter, or have confidence in a clean and delightful exchange. Its eBay’s reputation service, but tied to a variety of services in some shared “good dude or bad in general” way. Its all it would take to make the internet world, and everyone really, a better place.

I did a quick scan and didn’t see anything like this, but if anyone knows of somebody building this, let me know.

Because the “humanity is inherently good” thinker in me feels he’s suffering just a little for being such a floof, and a such a service would remove that, would help build that connection, and the happiness quotient in the universe would increase (ie making the world a better place, isn’t that what we all want??).

Further to this, such a service could be used on internet dating sites like Tinder/etc., as an anti-flake device.

Ok, so someone go build it now. You’re welcome internet.