Towards Understanding the Requirements and Limitations of Reputation-Based Systems

Reputation-management, as proposed for dynamic and open systems aims to provide mechanism for analysing the behaviour of agents, and to distribute this information so that the impact of the actions of those acting against the interests of a community can be limited. We study the assumptions that underpin this decision-making role for reputation-management and highlight its limitations with regard to the incentives required to realise the benefits that are claimed for it. Moreover, we show that the benefits claimed for it may not be realisable without enforcing tight constraints on the behaviour and the expectations of agents with respect to the definition of the interaction model and the incentives it presents.