[WikiEN-l] Wired: Wikipedia to Color Code Untrustworthy Text

[Brian]

On Sun, Aug 30, 2009 at 9:08 PM, Carcharoth <carcharothwp at googlemail.com>wrote:

> On Mon, Aug 31, 2009 at 3:28 AM, Thomas Dalton<thomas.dalton at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> > 2009/8/31 Brian <Brian.Mingus at colorado.edu>:
> >> I would also point out that competition can be a very healthy thing and
> it
> >> could very well be a motivating tool. Assuming an algorithm that is
> >> difficult to game editors might well be very interested in improving
> their
> >> reputation scores. It could even give some credibility to the
> encyclopedia.
> >
> > Yes, competition is a good motivator, but that is only useful if it is
> > motivating people to do something desirable. We don't actually want
> > people to try and avoid being reverted - WP:BOLD is still widely
> > accepted as a good guideline, isn't it?
>
> Is it not more likely that most long-term editors who have been active
> for years have had most of their text mercilessly edited into oblivion
> and have very low average "trust" levels? And more recent editors may
> have higher trust levels?
>
> Carcharoth
>
>
With the disclaimer that I haven't read the paper since the 2006 Wikimania,
no, the algorithm is smarter than that. Simply having your edits overwritten
at some point in the future is not going to detract from the period of time
that your edit lasted. Additionally, if some but not all of your words
persist through rewrites that would contribute to your reputation.