Robin comments:

[T]he world would be better if we praised folks more for what they did than who they are.

Obviously. And the reverse is also true: criticize them for what they do rather than who they are.

Some folks cling to less useful ways.

I don’t think we can understand the logic of the conventions of praise and blame in isolation from the logic of collective action.

Suppose we’re trying to coordinate to provide some kind of public good for our community. . .

One way we encourage compliance in collective endeavors is to confer higher status on those who are consistently cooperative, who have a proven record of adherence to cooperative norms, and who publicly participate in community rituals of costly signaling.

This does not encourage good deeds, it merely encourages conformity. This is not cooperation in any meaningful sense, it is avoidance of the threat of punishment.

Since this is obvious to all observers it also encourages rebellion and secret monkey-wrenching. And many of those who conform out of fear will flip against the mob at an opportune moment. It stifles any sense of community membership and good fellow feeling.

Praise and blame for acts independent of past acts or biases against or for the doer have the opposite effect: anyone can be praised or punished for their acts so it is never too late to do right, and no one gets a pass. All are assumed to be members in good standing of the community, even potential leaders, and that status is always up for review. Each has to think for themselves in the current situation, which helps the group avoid bad decisions and sometimes improves good decisions.

Many men aren’t good fathers because they’re unwilling to bear the burdens of the task. So Larry’s friends and family should help out by giving him encouragement and an elevated sense of status. Of course, the general practice of good fatherhood does makes a big difference to the rest of us. So praising Larry for being a good father is not only a way to help a friend meet his obligations. It is a way to reinforce an important norm. If we praise Larry publicly, it is a way to signal our own commitment to the norm and to advertise that others who embody it will likewise be rewarded with praise.

You can praise Larry for doing something that you think is good - some fatherly act - whether you think he is a "good father" or not, and should do so. But imposing your biased judgement about the whole of his fatherly effort on him does not improve the community, it just creates dissension and at best merely makes it more like you want, and it can fairly be said that what you want will be considered to be bad by some, perhaps many.

For example, it does not help for me to note that Wilkinson has a priggish streak and a tendency to be a morals harridan, a consistent proponent of the intimate tyrannies that often make insular communities such a horror, a megalomaniac who dreams of enlarging the scope of such tyrannies from local and intimate to remote and impersonal. The issue here is what he said, not who he is. The possibility exists that in future he may do something good, and it is more likely to happen if he is not burdened with all his historical baggage. Similarly, even if that historical baggage was of a nicer sort it would be more likely that his next acts would be good since he wouldn't get a pass for a screw-up.

Reputation systems do not usefully apply in all instances. They have a useful role in consumer decisions - which brand to buy, which service to engage - but they do not help with encouraging fellow feeling or community coherence. The key to grasping this is that consumers have multiple choices, and though they are influenced by the judgements of others they are free to dissent and choose an alternative that better suits their private and particular desires. This is not true of communities since the cost of changing communities is far, far larger. It is a necessary option - voting with your feet so to speak - but it is very costly. So called virtual communities on the net that are not so tied to geography, like clubs and associations within geographic communities, are less costly to change for cause.

I think that it is important to grasp that societies depend on individuals keeping their wits about them and truly thinking about the tasks at hand. Conformity degrades the community by shutting down thought - making it riskier - and all but guarantees that the community will underachieve. Over time such communities are more likely to collapse. The natural tendencies of humans to self-segregate and form insular societies weakens them in many cases, makes them too stupid to do effective group problem solving, and so needs to be resisted rather than encouraged. It's more like a bad habit than a core virtue, though it can't be eliminated. That's how we are, sadly.