Hi all,
According to Wired, WikiTrust will be enabled on Wikipedia. Does
anyone know anything about this?
It's also been picked up by TG Daily -
view/43812/140/ - which says it's already in place.
Mike
Begin forwarded message:
From: Keith Old <keithold(a)gmail.com>
Date: 31 August 2009 01:24:50 BDT
To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
Subject: [WikiEN-l] Wired: Wikipedia to Color Code Untrustworthy Text
Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
Folks,
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/08/wikitrust/
Wired reports:
*"Starting this fall, you’ll have a new reason to trust the
information you
find on Wikipedia: An optional feature called “WikiTrust” will
color code
every word of the encyclopedia based on the reliability of its
author and
the length of time it has persisted on the page.*
*More than 60 million people visit the free, open-access
encyclopedia each
month, searching for knowledge on 12 million pages in 260
languages. But
despite its popularity,
**Wikipedia*<http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/08/wikitrust/
www.wikipedia.org>
* has long suffered criticism from those who say it’s not reliable.
Because
anyone with an internet connection can contribute, the site is
subject to
vandalism, bias and misinformation. And edits are anonymous, so
there’s no
easy way to separate credible information from fake content created by
vandals.*
*Now, researchers from the **Wiki Lab* <http://trust.cse.ucsc.edu/
* at the
University of California, Santa
Cruz have created a system to help
users
know when to trust Wikipedia—and when to reach for that dusty
Encyclopedia
Britannica on the shelf. Called
**WikiTrust*<http://wikitrust.soe.ucsc.edu/index.php/Main_Page>
*, the program assigns a color code to newly edited text using an
algorithm
that calculates author reputation from the lifespan of their past
contributions. It’s based on a simple concept: The longer information
persists on the page, the more accurate it’s likely to be.*
*Text from questionable sources starts out with a bright orange
background,
while text from trusted authors gets a lighter shade. As more
people view
and edit the new text, it gradually gains more “trust” and turns
from orange
to white."*
More in story
*Regards*
**
*Keith*
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