FAQs
[Features and Benefits]
SezWho is a universal profile service that engages your community and enables content discovery. SezWho is all about making the Social Web truly social.
SezWho enables content rating, universal user profiles, and reputation-based content discovery to be added to any social media site. The SezWho service works with blogs, forums, wikis, video/picture sharing sites, discussion boards and anywhere else where people contribute content and engage in conversations.
SezWho is focused on delivering benefits to all participants in social media interactions:
. Readers can easily distinguish credible content and commentary, and they can follow contributors as they participate on social media sites across the web
. Contributors gain web-wide recognition for their insights and expertise, with a universal profile that accumulates a record of all their contributions, across all communities
. Site-Owners and Publishers can spotlight and leverage informative, high-quality content to engage their communities and drive traffic
Central Authentication and Universal Contributor Profiles: A registration and login service for participants on SezWho-enabled sites enables links to all of their contributions, comments, ratings and reputation scores to be saved within a portable, persistent profile. Identity is established by email, URL or OpenID, and profiles include pictures, avatars and links to personal sites.
Configurable Widgets for Rating, Filtering and Profile Viewing: Templated and CSS-based UI elements that can be easily integrated into any site's content posting and comment sections.
Dashboards for Site Owners and Participants: SezWho portal for managing accounts, updating profiles and viewing statistics. Contributors can assess their impact on readers, and readers can see a history of all the content and comments they have rated. Site owners can access information on user interactions, content quality and traffic statistics.
I run a blog/forum/social media site. How can SezWho help me?
SezWho engages your community by improving the quality of the contributed content and commentary, and by increasing frequency and scope of interactions. All your content becomes more accessible to readers and your contributors will attract new traffic from across the web.
I contribute posts and comments across the web. How can SezWho help me?
SezWho will enable you to establish a web-wide reputation based on your expertise and thought leadership. Your SezWho profile presents a history of all your contributions, and readers can follow your conversations across sites and between different communities.
I visit lots of social media sites looking for good information. How can SezWho help me?
SezWho enables you to distinguish credible, relevant content amid a sea of marginal information. And once you discover contributors that you like, you can explore all the topics and conversations they have participated in, at any web site within the SezWho network.
Does SezWho take over my content, or copy it?
No. Unlike some other services that process user comments on blogs, SezWho does not host any site content. All published and user-supplied content remains on - and is controlled by - the original site. SezWho is implemented as a plug-in web service that integrates with the site's platform, and SezWho does not re-direct any traffic away from the site.
The basic SezWho rating, reputation and profile services are provided for free on the currently supported platforms. SezWho will be offering upgrades to premium products and services in the future, but basic SezWho integration for standard social media platforms will always be available as a free service.
[Site Integration]
WordPress versions xx to 2.5, Movable Type, Blogger, Drupal and phpBB. Other standard platform install packages are in the pipeline, and SezWho has announced a Developer Toolkit that enables SezWho to be integrated with virtually any social media web platform.
How do the SezWho widgets integrate with my site?
Here's an example of how SezWho rating and profiling is integrated with a blog post: 
The ratings widget displays the current community-ranked contextual rating for the original post. The avatar, identity of the poster and a hover link to their profile is shown below the ratings widget. All the UI elements can be formatted and positioned to accommodate any blog theme and style.
Integration of the ratings and profile widget with user comments is similar:
Here, the rating indicates the community's assessment of the commenter's contribution. Again, the format and positioning of the visual elements is completely configurable.
An optional Filter Widget can be incorporated into user comment views:
The filter allows readers to collapse the comment list and display only those comments with ratings above specified levels. This is very useful for sites that have a lot of community interaction.
Other widgets that can be integrated with sites include the Badge and Red Carpet widgets:
The Badge widget can be placed on a SezWho contributor's personal site to display their aggregate reputation and profile. The Red Carpet widget can be placed on any site to display a list of the top contributors, their profiles and links to their recent contributions.
For details on downloading, installing and configuring SezWho on standard social media platforms, see this. For information on the Developer Toolkit that enables SezWho to be integrated with any social media web platform, see this.
[Using SezWho]
How does the ratings widget work?
Readers can mouse over and click on the ratings widget to register their opinion of the post or comment. The rating is expressed as five different graduated levels, as configured by the site, and the SezWho platform processes the ratings click as a numerical score from 0 to 5.
If you have already logged in to your SezWho account, clicking on the rating will immediately re-calculate the total score based on many factors, including the rater's reputation and interaction history.
Why am I being asked to login/register?
When you click a ratings widget on a SezWho-enabled site, the SezWho service first determines if you are already authenticated (logged in) to the SezWho network. If not, the following pop-up will be displayed:
You can either login to the SezWho network or have your rating be processed as an anonymous vote. The login widow looks like this:
Once you are logged in, you can vote to rate content and comments on any site in the SezWho network. The login remains active across all SezWho sites for a period of 24 hours.
If you are a first time user, you can register with the SezWho network by clicking 'Register Now' in the Login window:
What's the difference between registered and anonymous ratings?
The SezWho content rating and reputation service accumulates votes from participants to determine the community scores for the quality of postings and comments, as well as the aggregated reputation scores for contributors. The rater's context determines the 'weight' of their vote. An anonymous rater has minimal influence on the overall reputation scores, while a registered rater can have significant influence depending on their own reputation, their scoring history and the context associated with the site and the content.
I'm just a reader of blogs, forums and other social media sites. Why should I register?
Registering with SezWho gives you a much stronger voice in the community. You can instantly express your opinion about any post or comment that is published on sites within the SezWho network. Your votes will count much more than anonymous ratings, and you can even establish a reputation as an influential thought leader in your community. SezWho also provides you with an extremely valuable tool: A history of all your ratings is saved in your account profile so you can review all your past activity on all the SezWho sites that you've visited.
How do I view a contributor's profile?
Simply mouse-over the contributor's avatar or the 'Check me out' link next to the contributor's name, and the SezWho service will display a pop-up profile:
What information is shown in the Profile?
Name: The public identity used by the contributor, which may be specific to sites or global across the SezWho network.
Avatar: Image provided by the contributor (or fetched from Gravitar, MyBlogLog, BlogCatalog)
Star Power: The contributor's aggregate reputation score
About, Blog, Website: Personal information provided by the contributor
Contribution list: List of all posts, comments and forum contributions on all sites, ordered by newest to oldest. Each entry displays the links to the site, article and specific content that was contributed, along with the community rating for each contribution
Show More: Links to the contributor's SezWho public profile page which displays a complete history of all their contributions
Edit Profile: Links to the SezWho login page to allow contributors to access their account
Follow Me: Allows readers to subscribe to a contributor's RSS activity feed
[Star Power Score]
What is the SezWho 'Star Power' score?
The SezWho Star Power score is a long term rating for a contributor that indicates their overall community reputation within a given context. The history of all contributions and community ratings are considered when calculating one's "Star Power" score.
How is the Star Power score calculated?
The SezWho scoring algorithm is called Community Rank. It is a proprietary, page-rank like recursive algorithm based on reputation scores of both rater and contributor, time and frequency of interaction, consistency of ratings and postings, subject (context) under discussion and user reputation for that subject.
How is the Star Power score related to content rating scores?
When a post, comment or forum entry is first created, its initial content rating is equivalent to the contributor's contextual Star Power score. Subsequently the community can rate the content item and cause the score to rise or fall. Changes in individual content rating scores will affect the overall Star Power score for the contributor.
How can I improve my Star Power Score?
The best way to build and keep a high Star Power score is to consistently make quality contributions, frequently rate other user's contributions, and generally be an active, constructive member of the communities associated with the sites where you participate.
Do SezWho Star Power scores carry across sites?
Yes, SezWho is a distributed system. User interactions and reputation from one social media site are carried over to other sites. If you have a good reputation as indicated by a high Star Power score, you don't need to re-establish your reputation when you visit new sites. Contributions made on the new site would be given a high content rating that reflects the Star Power score.
[Identity and Privacy]
How does SezWho identify users?
SezWho users have a public name and an internal login identifier. The public user name is associated with a SezWho profile. The SezWho login identifier is based on the user's email address, OpenID or URL. These identifiers are always kept private and are not displayed on any site or conveyed to third parties.
Identity authentication is the cornerstone of any good reputation system. SezWho supports Reputation Protection which enables users to lock down their profiles. When a profile is Reputation Protected, any new interaction will require explicit user authorization. The Comments and Ratings verification can be turned on from the My Account page of the SezWho site. This feature allows users to fully control their interactions.
Can I have multiple SezWho accounts based on different login identifiers?
Yes, you can have multiple SezWho accounts based on different email addresses. However, we recommend having one account and adding all your email addresses to that account, or use OpenID to establish a single universal account identity. This allows you to build your 'Star Power' quickly across all your email addresses (irrespective of which one you choose to use on a particular site). However, if you want to have different personas across different communities feel free to use separate accounts.
Why am I asked to login to SezWho when rating content?
Logging in to SezWho establishes your identity and allows SezWho to utilize your reputation score to calculate accurate content ratings. Also, rating while logged in improves your Star Power score. Anonymous ratings are weighted less and have no effect on your Star Power.
I don't want to be recognized in the communities where I participate. Can I opt out of SezWho?
SezWho believes that by making our online personas public, all of us can dramatically improve the conversation in online communities. However we respect people's choice to not participate. SezWho enables such users to opt out.