Hi Amy, all

There was a discussion around this issue on Clay Shirky's blog Corante in 2005-2006, around the time of the launch of Citizendium. One proposal I remember was to feature the number of editors who had worked on an article at the top of every article page as a quality metric indicator; there may be others. You will find the refs in [drumroll: shameless promotion alert] my paper on WP in the Journal of Science Communication: http://jcom.sissa.it/archive/09/01/Jcom0901(2010)C01/Jcom0901(2010)C04

Hope that helps
cheers,

Mathieu

>
> Message: 3
> Date: Fri, 24 Sep 2010 17:00:37 -0400
> From: Amy Bruckman <asb@cc.gatech.edu>
> Subject: [Wiki-research-l] cool stuff to show your favorite librarian?
> To: Research into Wikimedia content and communities
> <wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org>
> Message-ID: <4C9D1175.8040401@cc.gatech.edu>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
>
>
> Next Friday I'm giving a talk to the Library Information
> Technology
> Association (LITA) entitled, "How Wikipedia Really Works, and
> What This
> Means for the Nature of 'Truth.'"
>
> I've got my talk mostly worked out, but would love to add more
> on
> current research--particularly in the area of interface
> innovations to
> show how trustworthy an article is. What should I talk
> about? Got
> anything you think librarians will get excited about?
>
> My main argument is that knowledge is socially constructed, and
> to
> assess an article you need to know how many people have edited
> it and
> how many are watching it. The best Wikipedia articles are
> arguably more
> rigorously reviewed than a top journal article, but of course
> there's
> huge variability from there.
>
> All leads (including shameless self promotion)
> appreciated! Thanks!
>
> -- Amy
>
>
>
>