i first asked for a while back, but i think we need it more and more: i would pay good money for a system that tracked people not as friends, but as arseholes. an application that correlates identities across sites and greys out their comments and the like. in "real life" i can pick my friends and drop the arseholes. online i have no idea who "Thom" (see comments on that article) might be, and no way of flagging that same user on, say stackoveflow, when they are asking for help. we need some way to make karma work better online.

http://www.acooke.org/cute/Automatemy0.html