Prompt 4

Expertise on the web is a funny beast.

My notion of this does differ from my concept of expertise in face-to-face settings.
I assume that in such a setting, an expert will be introduced to me by someone who has vetted the person's credentials. In face-to-face interactions, actions do speak louder than words and one can judge someone's expertise in procedural/physical activities just by observation alone.

In an online setting, we may have to look at actions more than words. This is where things get tricky.

On a community I visit, they use a form of karma related to forum titles.
Every so often, after a specific milestone of posts, your forum title changes and everyone knows what these milestones are - so a person with a certain title will also have a certain number of posts/activity that they have engaged in and ostensibly, will be an expert.
I go by forum karma in an online setting.

However, a large amount of activity does not mean that activity has been useful. Bruns points that out in Chapter 12. Some people might just like to see their post counts add up. In my experience, judging someone's expertise online also involves evaluating other people's interactions with the person in question (are they civil/reverential/derogatory?) and also - observing how often this person in question is called upon/quoted in the popular colloquy.

Sometimes a large number of posts need not reflect either - good or poor quality/expertise. It might simply indicate a longevity of existence on a particular forum.

This is where vouching from the community comes in.
On this same web forum, some people get custom titles, which are suggested by the community, not requested by the person. If you get a title which reflects on your expertise, which has been popularly chosen - well then, you're golden.

On another website, members have the option of "vouching" for each other and a little icon appears next to the vouched person's name. Yet, this person can't vouch for anyone else until at least three people vouch for them in the first place.
This is a fairly robust system of expertise recognition.

In a nutshell, credentials and actions would be bases for expertise evaluation that I'd use in "meatworld" and activity + popular vouching (not popularity) would be bases I'd use in an online environment.