7.4. Content Reputation Is Very Different from Karma

Reputable entity refers to everything in a database, including users and content items, with one or more reputations attached to it. All kinds of reputation score types and all kinds of displays and use patterns might seem equally valid for content reputation and karma, but usually they’re not. To highlight the differences between content reputation and karma, we’ve categorized them by the ways in which they’re typically calculated:

Simple reputation

Simple reputation is any reputation score that is generated directly by user evaluation of a reputable entity and that is subject to an elementary aggregation calculation, such as simple average. For example, simple reputation is used on most ratings-and-reviews sites. Simple reputation is direct and easy to understand.

Complex reputation

Complex reputation is a score aggregated from multiple evaluations, including evaluations of different but related targets, calculated with an opaque method. Email IP spammer, Google PageRank, and eBay feedback reputations are examples of complex reputation. It’s an indirect evaluation, and users may not understand how it was calculated, even if the score is displayed.