What's the Bitchun Society and what's whuffie?Whuffie is a high five, it's that look of appreciation you give for a job well done, it's a thumbs up. It's your personal capital with your friends and neighbors. It's whuffie! People who give out and receive whuffie are in the Bitchun Society. It was first mentioned in Cory Doctorow's novel, Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom.What is the Bitchun Society for?Right now, being part of the Bitchun Society lets you find people who share your interests and can help you through the use of a special Skype bot we call the Bitchun Butler.How do I join the Bitchun Society?First, you need the Skype client. Then you need to download our special whuffie tracker. Now, you can give whuffie. Technically, you can receive whuffie without a tracker, but you will not be able to see it. As soon as you get the whuffie tracker plug-in, you'll notice your Skype contacts list will change and numbers will appear after each contact's name.How is that different from other social networks?It is quite similar, except the following: it lets you see anybody's whuffie in real-time and it is extremely hard to artificially inflate your numbers or badmouth somebody else. The algorithm used to calculate whuffie protects you from the most common cheating technique on the internet - creating fake identities and then posting feedback using them. Because whuffie is subjective no amount of whuffie (both positive and negative) given by these cheats will affect how you see others.What do those numbers like +208.74 -2.01 mean?The numbers shown next to each contact's name show the amount of whuffie that this person has earned. Positive numbers show whuffie gained through good deeds. Negative numbers are for bad stuff. You can instantly see how much whuffie people in the Society have earned and your own whuffie is shown too.How do I get whuffie?You get them because you give help to someone through the Bitchun Butler or because someone just decided to give it to you in appreciation of your efforts.How do I give whuffie?All you have to do is start a chat with someone and during the chat, give them a thumbs up or a star emoticon and they'll start getting whuffie. Here's a list of what the emoticons do:
I've got somebody I do not want to deal with?It's possible and this system is also designed to track that as well. Once you give someone a thumbs down emoticon, they're on your wall of shame. Use this wisely.What about my privacy?In order for the whuffie calculations to work the information about whuffie given to others has to be shared, but it is only shared with your friends. There is no central server that stores that information, all the calculations are done locally too. If you want to keep the fact that you have ever talked to somebody private, do not ever give whuffie to that person.Bitchun Butler only keeps the information that you explicitly give to him, and you can always remove the tags you do not like later. Still need help?The Bitchun Butler that will actually connect you to another member of the Society so he or she can answer your questions (and not just about the Society either). Make sure you're using Skype and click the green button below to see the Butler in action! Just enter your question or type /? to see the list of popular tags; type /tags your tags separated by spaces to register to be found by others.There is more information in The Bitchun Society Blog
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© 2006 The Bitchun Foundation
