WoT¹ ratings are supposedly a shorthand themselves - just plain, integer numbers between -10 and +10, with every value meant to stand for something. For what, exactly? Well, given how few they are and how diverse the situations can be, the only possible answer is that it... depends and mostly on the rater, really. More to the point, these rating values can be used and assigned in any way one wants but are generally assumed to reflect to some extent at least, the degree to which one trusts one's own knowledge and understanding of specific others, as they are met and interacted with.

But people being people, plain numbers as shorthand never really work as well as words where any meaning is intended. Hence, in practice, any consistent and systematic approach to actually using WoT ratings ends up quite quickly with at least one, possibly several word-based shorthand schemas for the ratings themselves. And while no such schema can ever be somehow "the one" or definitive or whatever else of this sort, there is perhaps something to be gained at least from making public a first such schema - as an example or maybe even just as a first attempt perhaps, if nothing else.

As to how this first schema even came to be - in Eulora 2, WoT ratings are used not just by players as they see fit but by the NPCs and generally by the game itself. Hence, there was the need for at least one specific schema that the code can rely on to give and interpret at the very least its own ratings - though possibly as well those of others in contexts where it is meant to interpret them. And it turned out in fact quite fun to attempt a consistent approach in finding meaningful shorthand names for all those rating values! So here is the current result, with negative values simply adding a "mis" prefix in front of the same word to mark the mis-alignment between rater and ratee:

• 0 remembered (no negative here, it's the one rating stating that one has interacted with this person and they want to keep this marked but they prefer not to give either a negative or a positive rating - hence, the rated person is simply remembered)
• 1 contacted, -1 miscontacted
• 2 acquainted, -2 misaquainted
• 3 perceived, -3 misperceived
• 4 encountered, -4 misencountered
• 5 believed, -5 misbelieved
• 6 known, -6 misknown
• 7 trusted, -7 mistrusted
• 8 respected, -8 misrespected
• 9 admired, -9 misadmired
• 10 fated (the main meaning of "fated" that I am using here is that of "determined" as in unchangeable in fact because this is pretty much what I see a 10/-10 rating validly standing for - the ratee is clearly and fully determined now as in the future, whether this is for instance because they are a known deterministic code bot or perhaps simply dead and thus not further able to either act or change at all, in any way), -10 misfated².

This is all, the first known public shorthand schema for WoT ratings, feel free to agree, disagree or even just argue with it, whether quietly on your own or more wordy in company, in the comments section below.

1. Web of Trust, see what it is for, how it works and how to use it. ↩

2. According to the Oxford dictionary, the word "misfated" is "obsolete" and "last recorded around 1600s." So I suppose I'm reviving words here, even if I didn't set out to do this on purpose. I'm not even quite sure how or why would a word obtained via a perfectly plain and common prefix ever be obsolete but in any case, here it is then "last recorded" again, quite more recently than the 1600s. ↩

Category: Coding, Eulora

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