A reputation economy via "via:"?

As posted at the end of last year, 2006 was the year I really got into del.icio.us, in large part due to Cote' pointing me to the "for:" tag (the other large part due to the Firefox extension for replacing the standard bookmarks with del.icio.us tags).

The corollary to "for:" is "via:" - if somebody tags something "for:aqualung:" and I like it, I save it too, add some tags of my own, and tip the hat with (for example) "via:JamesGovernor". Go search del.icio.us for THAT tag, and you find (at time of writing) there are 113 occurrences - 113 times that James has alerted somebody to something of interest that the somebody has appreciated, AND tagged it with the "via:". Over time, I would expect this to add to James' whuffie, and for an open-source analyst to be seen as sharing useful information it must be a positive.

Now, at the moment, while "for:" has some 'official' status at del.icio.us, being included in their Help as a means of sharing links with your network, the use of "via:" APPEARS to be limited to the Redmonk circle of acquaintances (please correct me if I'm wrong, because if it is more widely used I'll be very happy) - how do we get del.icio.us to include the complementary "via:" in their "for:" advice?

If use of the "via:" tag increases sufficiently, I believe it would be valuable as an indicator of reputation as a source of information, contacts, network etc - not the only one, but since it is applied by others, not yourself, it would tend to have greater validity than an ego-boosting blog post, or rigged Digg results (although I'm sure someone either more nefarious/clever than I would find some way of gaming it ... am I naive to imagine that this would self-correct? I COULD tag this post with a lot of "for:" directions, but those people would have to decide to tag with "via:" for it to be of value to me ... let's watch what happens! I will apologise to all the people "for-red" in advance, and absolve them of any obligation to reciprocate).

Anyway - this is the sort of idea that pops into my head when woken for work at 3:30am ... vintage has well and truly started.


[Aside: my Redmonk schwag arrived today - Flickr pix when I get time to take them!]


Technorati Tags: del.icio.us, via:, tagging, Redmonk, for:JamesGovernor, for:sogrady, for:bushwald, for:annez, for:hortovanyi, for:steph, for:leisa, for:johntunger, for:dahowlett