Part of a government-subsidised research project into the use of social software for the stimulation of knowledge sharing between SME's and academic and/or research institutions, I am gathering some evidence on the following questions:

- Do you have experience with peer rating or evaluation of contributions to CoPs ? If so, could you briefly explain how this worked, and what were the pros and cons ?

- Do you have experience with reward/incentive systems for contributions to CoPs ? If so, could you briefly explain how this worked, and what were the pros and cons ?

- Alternatively, if a conscious decision was taken NOT to implement a peer rating and/or reward/incentive system, what was the motivation ?

I would be most interested to hear YOUR stories.
The resulting whitepaper will be made public on http://www.knosos.be and on KnowledgeBoard
tx

Hi Philippe,

in all the CoP systems I've been involved, we've eschewed any formal recognition system. The reason is that (as we found after two experiments) they are easily manipulable. They put the ranking of people in the hands of activists and cliques.

So we rather stick with the tacit endorsement that one person garners for his/her views after having show repeatedly that those views are reliable. In other words, we try to enable people to manage their reputation, but don't give any extra levers.

Of course, some little, less manipulable details help newbies recognise others. Like grading people according to posts sent to relevant forums within the CoP.

Hope it helps, even if it's late :-). Regards,

Miguel