Audit

How can we audit Consumerium to make sure it is accurate and reliable? Who is the auditor? What is the audit process? When does it happen? How can we audit content from outside providers, or providers themselves?

We may set up some democratic administration organisation to see that all is done with as little foul-play as we can arrange. See governance where Consumerium Council is outlined as possibility. We can't avoid bad things happening, by setting rules we can't enforce. So there must be an enforcement mechanism for daily routine, perhaps some auditing happens day by day using the trust in, or "social capital of" the board. In a very real way, the "good name" of Consumerium, the social capital it has with consumers themselves, is dependent on the trust they have in its board, council or governing mechanism.

Given that mechanism or board or council, the audit is just a process they apply, often carried out over a short period of time when claims, evidence, and sources are investigated without mercy. A closely related issue is the inventory when everything is "counted", but how it got there is not considered. This is usually relevant only to the infrastructural capital.

Content verification will always be problematic. Ideally the Consumerium team doesn't actually input any information on their own, but just provide the tools for others to put content up for consumers who trust in it and make decisions by it. This is about the integrity of instructional capital.

Some reliability issues can only be solved by agreeing on rules that define what different participators can input but this still leaves the question of the audit itself, which validates that such rules were followed.

Trust in individuals may well be the bottom line, but it can be the case that there is economic pressure people to exaggerate their own opinions. Imagine Company X employees put some accusations about Company Y. This can be questionable, especially if the two of them are direct competitors, and the employees are being paid to do it on company time, or have stock options etc..