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