Dawn G. Gregg

The Role of Reputation Systems in Reducing On-Line Auction Fraud

On-line auction fraud is the most frequently reported Internet crime. This research investigates whether on-line reputation systems are a useful mechanism for potential buyers to avoid fraudulent auctions. Content analysis of complaints posted in an on-line auction reputation system is used to improve understanding of on-line auction fraud and the role of reputation systems in documenting, predicting, and reducing fraud. The results show (1) that the number of fraud allegations found in an on-line reputation system significantly exceeds the number of fraud allegations made through official channels, (2) that recent negative feedback posted in an on-line reputation system is useful in predicting future on-line auction fraud, and (3) that experienced on-line auction buyers are in a better position to use reputation system data to avoid potentially fraudulent auctions.

Understanding the Philosophical Underpinnings of Software Engineering Research in Information Systems

The Information Systems (IS) discipline, and related research, focuses on the development, understanding, and use of technology to meet business needs. Technology, in particular “software,” is the basis for IS research, making software engineering a critical component of research in the IS domain. While the importance of software development is well accepted, what constitutes high quality software engineering research is not well defined. Perhaps this is because some software development clearly is not research and it is hard to distinguish between pure application development, and systems development that pushes the boundaries of knowledge. Sir Karl Popper argued that the scientific quality of research is not based on its empirical method, but on the nature of the questions asked. Our research suggests that software engineering can meet Poppers criteria for scientific research.Drawing on well-established research philosophies, we propose a software engineering research methodology (SERM) and discuss the utility of this methodology for contributing to and expanding the IS body of knowledge. We also describe the considerations that need to be addressed by SERM to enhance acceptability of software engineering research in IS. Our suggestions are corroborated with a review of current IS software engineering research reported in leading IS journals.

A typology of complaints about eBay sellers

More could be done to reduce rising online fraud rates.

Auction advisor: an agent-based online-auction decision support system

Online auctions are proving themselves as a viable alternative in the C2C and B2C marketplace. Several thousand new items are placed for auction every day and determining which items to bid on or when and where to sell an item are difficult questions to answer for online-auction participants. This paper presents a multiagent Auction Advisor system designed to collect data related to online auctions and use the data to help improve the decision making of auction participants. A simulation of applied Auction Advisor recommendations and a small research study that used subjects making real purchases at online auctions both indicate that online-auction buyers and sellers achieve tangible benefit from the current information acquired by and recommendations made by the Auction Advisor agents.

Adaptive web information extraction

The Amorphic system works to extract Web information for use in business intelligence applications.

Mashups: A Literature Review and Classification Framework

The evolution of the Web over the past few years has fostered the growth of a handful of new technologies (e.g. Blogs, Wiki’s, Web Services). Recently web mashups have emerged as the newest Web technology and have gained lots of momentum and attention from both academic and industry communities. Current mashup literature focuses on a wide array of issues, which can be partially explained by how new the topic is. However, to date, mashup literature lacks an articulation of the different subtopics of web mashup research. This study presents a broad review of mashup literature to help frame the 1subtopics in mashup research.

E‐commerce Auction Agents and Online‐auction Dynamics

Online‐auctions are one of the most successful types of electronic markets. They bring together buyers and sellers on a massive scale. However, using an electronic medium for conducting auctions has fundamental differences from traditional English‐style auctions. One difference is the availability of software agents that can facilitate many aspects of online‐auction participation. The addition of software agents into online‐auctions is already having an impact on the dynamics of online‐auctions. This study examines existing agent technologies with regard to their effect on online‐auctions. In addition, future directions for research related to online‐auction agents and the possible benefits of these agents are also discussed.

Exploiting the Information Web

The World Wide Web is an increasingly important data source for business decision making; however, extracting information from the Web remains one of the challenging issues related to Web business intelligence applications. To use heterogeneous Web data for decision making, documents containing relevant data must be located, and the data of interest within the documents must be identified and extracted. Currently, most automatic information extraction systems can only cope with a limited set of document formats or do not adapt well to changes in document structure, as a result, many real-world data sources with complex document structures cannot be consistently interpreted using a single information extraction system. This paper presents an adaptive information extraction system prototype that combines multiple information extraction approaches to allow more accurate and resilient data extraction for a wide variety of Web sources. The Amorphic Web information extraction system prototype can locate data of interest based on domain knowledge or page structure, can automatically generate a wrapper for a data source, and can detect when the structure of a Web-based resource has changed and act on this to search the updated resource to locate the desired data. The prototype Amorphic information extraction system demonstrated improved information extraction accuracy for the four different extraction scenarios examined when compared with traditional data extraction approaches

Developing a collective intelligence application for special education

This research uses an action research methodology to develop a web based collective intelligence application, DDtrac. DDtrac allows special education practitioners to collect data and share insights related to student performance during educational tasks and social interactions and can be used to assess special education student progress and improve decision making. A survey of 40 special education professionals and a four year case study using a single subject both indicate that educators, clinicians, families, parents, or other professionals that work with individuals with developmental disabilities achieve tangible benefit from the real time data tracking and decision support provided by the DDtrac application. The development of the DDtrac application and subsequent end-user evaluation is used to develop a set of six requirements for collective intelligence applications. These requirements can be used to guide future developers seeking to create web based applications that harness the collective intelligence of groups.

A proposal for an open DSS protocol

At present the Internet provides access to hundreds of gigabytes each of software, documents, sounds, images, and many other types of information [6]. It is only a matter of time before vendors begin deploying DSS on the Web on this type of scale. For DSS to be efficiently discovered on the Web, a protocol that allows DSS information to be found and transmitted must be established. In addition, a mechanism to provide a consistent organized view of DSS information is necessary. A DSS resource discovery system will need to identify a resource, collect information about it from several sources, and convert the representation to a format that can be indexed for efficient searching [6]. The purpose of this article is to propose a protocol suite that will facilitate the discovery of DSS on the Web by allowing Web pages containing DSS to be easily distinguished from other Web pages. In addition, the protocol provides a common format for describing DSS, such that autonomous intelligent search agents can identify DSS that meet specific user-defined requirements. A Proposal for an Open DSS Protocol