Dear colleagues

In early June our team from the Center for Computer Education of the University of Teacher Education Bern in Switzerland released the online tool Wikibu:

www.wikibu.ch

The main goal of Wikibu is sensitization of scholars to a considered use of Wikipedia. Wikibu attempts to do this with the following means:

- Wikibu-Points should provide a rough indication of the reliability of an article. The Wikibu-Points are solely based on statistical criteria and represents only probabilities. They might be compared to black ice caution labels. On road sites with such a label there is a higher risk of black ice. But there must not in fact be black ice there. And that doesn't mean, that there is no black ice on road sites without such a label. - Wikibu criteria such as number of visitors or number of references (in relation to the length of the article) should provide ideas how users themselves could evaluate the content critically. - Warning notices should motivate to use meta information such as discussion pages and version histories. They point to current discussions or a series of edits. - A concrete school class setting should demonstrate, how information literacy regarding Wikipedia could be enhanced in schools and which role Wikibu thereby could play.

For the present, Wikibu is only available for the german Wikipedia. The next step will be the evaluation of the Wikibu-Points. Nando Stoecklin http://www.phbern.ch/mitarbeitende/nando-stoecklin/