Would there be any negative consequences if individual public reputation were more transparent to society?

I think the Genie is out of the bottle on this one.  I imagine some form of  rating system for individuals is bound to be developed sooner or later. Ideally more than one would emerge, forcing them to compete on quality and accuracy of results. The main design challenge of such a system would be to impose a cost on deliberate trolling while encouraging substantive, truthful feedback. If I were designing an app that allowed people to rate each other I would include the following requirements: While there is no real name policy, every user of the system must be  verified by an external identity platform (Facebook, Google+ or Linked In). Validation through multiple platforms would improve the weight of the ratings given by a given user External identity platforms would be used to identify any existing relationships between the persons rating and being rated Same last name, work at same company, cousins on Facebook Users have the right to challenge the "realness" of any individual rater based on their 3rd party profiles. Anonymous rating is allowed, but greater weight is given to ratings given "in person" (Alternatively, provide separate ratings for Anonymous and Verified raters) Anonymous raters must give a reason why they have chosen to rate anonymously Member of same social circle/relative Co-worker Client/vendor Priveleged relationship (lawyer/doctor/clergy) Fear retribution Every rating action must be reciprocal: what the rater says about the person being rated also contributes to their own reputation score A user that gives 70% negative feedback might have his negative ratings discounted 30% (or some other proportionate amount) Every rating must be based on a specific social interaction that give insight into the relationship between the rater and the rated at the time of the interaction This is a big UI challenge: instead of "Joe is rude and dismissive" make them say "Three years ago Joe was rude and dismissive when I was trying to sell him something" Allow rated users to respond to ratings, with an opportunity to tie the response to a specific individual in the case of anonymous ratings "Three years ago John Smith tried to sell me a used vacuum cleaner and wouldn't take no for an answer - he called me 20 times in 3 days." There is no way for the responder to know whether his response is directed to the right person -- it just becomes a new rating for that person.

Individual reputation is incredibly valued within our society. If you make a deal with someone, they are expected to keep up their end of the bargain -- and if they do not, then those two parties will likely not do business again. However, the way I read the intent of the question is about public reputation --- that is, what "the masses" think of any given individual. That matter is intertwined with considerations about what the society in question holds as public . Public reputation has to exist against some generally accepted set of behavioral standards. (Given that is watched by anyone at all, I'll accept the premise that has an issue in this arena.) With that framework understood, I think also that public reputation is highly valued by society; the problem is that we value people with reputations that likely land them on Santa's naughty list. I can point to , , , , , and twenty-first century as support of my assertion. I'll take one step further closer to what I believe to be the asker's intent and address Would there be any negative consequences if a positive public reputation were valued more by society? As I said, we first have to define what is "positive" -- but the biggest risk is a huge, quiet rise in duplicitousness, where influential people work even harder to maintain a good public face, but behind closed doors they do what they've always done.

There are positive aspects to anonymity. One of the great draws of the wild west in the latter part of the 19th Century was the opportunity to start your life over again by "moving to Texas". Reputations are not always true, nor always are they just and sometimes they can be quite persistent. If you happened to be in the 1880's and you happened to live in a small town in Central Ohio and you made bad choices, made errors of judgement, were tricked or coerced into bad business decisions or an unwise love affair or told off the local pastor or whatever...EVERYONE knew and your entire world could be tainted by your past. But there was an escape, you could sell your farm, pack up your stuff and head out to the West where no one knew you or anything about your past. A persistent transparent universal reputation (which is possible now with modern communications) makes starting over a lot tougher and everyone needs a mulligan once in a while.

If individual reputation were valued more, then I would expect university degrees to be worth less.  It's the individual that matters after all and graduates from most universities vary a lot in capability. Although one might not view this as a negative consequence for society, it would be a negative consequence for most university graduates.