The Application of Forgiveness in Social System Design

Written by: Asimina Vasalou, Jens Riegelsberger, and Adam Johnson

Comments: Jill, Chris

Summary: There were no pictures for this article :(

The idea of forgiveness for an online offense is something that most users don't do. Sites like Ebay make it too easy for you to just report someone and move on, instead of actually talking to the seller and trying to work things out. This paper focuses on defining forgiveness, and the idea of creating a system that can repair interactions between victims and offenders of online sites. Everyone may have a lapse of judgement or they may type something online that others will read and take offense to when the intended purpose was not to do that. The paper first describes what forgiveness is, and what factors it is comprised of.

"Forgiveness is the victim's pro-social change towards the offender as s/he replaces these initial negative motivations with positive motivations." This is comprised of seven factors:

• Offense severity: how sever was the offense to the victim.
• Intent: did the offender truly intend to offend someone
• Apology: the chance for the offender to redeem themselves and apologize for any harm they may have done
• Reparative Actions: if there was damage, a counter-action is in order for compensation
• Non-verbal Expressions
• Dyadic History: previous interactions between victim and offender
• History in the Community: the offender's reputation and past actions in the web community they are a part of

When things happen online it is relatively difficult to figure out if someone was intending to be rude in their comments, or if it was just they way you were reading it to yourself. So along with the factors of forgiveness, there has to be a basis for the system design and some boundaries for forgiveness to be possible.

• Forgiveness cannot be mandatory: this should be an optional route for the victim
• Forgiveness is not unconditional: forgiveness will follow after an offender acknowledges that there was a problem and takes responsibility for it
• Forgiveness does not necessarily repair trust or remove accountability: if a victim forgives and offender, this does not mean that their trust for this person will remain what it was before. The victim will not forget what had happened before, and this may still harm the relationship with the offender

There are many benefits to forgiveness. Some include:

1. The offender may still stay in the community if given the chance to redeem themselves because otherwise they may think they were wrongfully accused and punished unjustly.
2. Moderator costs would be cut down because there not be a constant need for intervention

A reparation system has to allow a user to be aware that this is an option (public awareness). Many community sites have a "report abuse" button that is in plain sight so a user can click on it without saying they could resolve issues themselves first by using the forgiveness option. The system should also notify an offender that there is a problem and give them ample time to address it before giving punishment. Since forgiveness is optional to the victim, the system should not interfere with their decisions and "regard the offender untrustworthy". The community itself can prevent problems before they occur. If there are things that a community can notify a user before a transaction happens, such as shipping problems or how many days it may take, this could alleviate a lot of the problems between buyer and seller. This could turn into something that many communities may want to look into because it would keep their users happier with each other, and allow them to keep interacting with other users in a tasteful manner.

Discussion:

I think this could be something very useful for Ebay to implement, because I know I for one would not know what to put on a description if I was selling something. I'd also be afraid that I forgot to mention something and the buyer would penalize me for it. The ability to forgive a user is there because many issues can be resolved through messaging, but many people don't think about that as an option and immediately go for the "report abuse" button. The only future work that would be associated with this, in my opinion, would be to make sure the community abides by the ruling of the victim. If they choose to forgive someone, then the community or site doesn't need to say that they are still untrustworthy. It should also make sure it is clear to everyone that there are more than just "report abuse" options for them to go to when they have a problem with another user.