A quick googling for ‘Shareaza file rating’ returns the Shareaza FAQ as one of its results.. in said FAQ it reads..

“…the rating column…reflect[s] a user’s opinion of the file, whether it be based on quality or not, it is the user’s choice.”

So in other words it is only that user. So a spammer could still use Shareaza, and then say that their garbage file was a five-star masterpiece. The only word you would have to go on is theirs. Credence is different in that if that one spammer says his file is great and another 10 people who downloaded it say that it sucks, that means it sucks. The opinions in Credence are related to each other.

People would use it, probably LimeWire developers could make this even easier to use.

You could rate the file up or down and have a selection on why.

Or just say that it’s a fake.

Sometimes I believe people put songs there, that aren’ t corrupted but sound like crap so you buy.

Shareaza’s simplistic approach will never be able to combat spam/bad files introduced into the network by a malicious entity such as the RIAA.

No. The trustworthiness computation is designed to preclude such attacks.

8. What happens when a large number of spammers vote each others’ spam up ? Can they fool the reputation system ?

No. Credence’s reputation computation is similar to Google’s PageRank, but is more general - every node computes a different rank based on its own votes. Reputation flows from a given good node along trust edges towards other nodes. Spammers can create tight cliques in which everyone votes on each others’ spam, but the entire clique will be deemed untrustworthy. And if anyone in the spammer clique does a search, they will see each others’ spam ranked high.

Now if only more people would actually make use of the feature. Sigh. That’s the downfall of systems like these. People are just too lazy, or simply don’t realize they can make a difference in regards to file authenticity.