You Can Put Your Trust in Wikipedia 2.0 New Scientist (09/22/07) Vol. 195, No. 2622, P. 28; Giles, Jim
as it appeared in the October 1, 2007 edition of ACM TechNews.
Wikipedia entries can be edited by anyone at anytime, which engenders heavy skepticism about the accuracy of the online encyclopedia's information. But the past several years have witnessed the development of projects whose goal is to increase public trust in Wikipedia and make vandalism less of a danger. One such project is WikiScanner, which reveals the identity of contributing individuals or organizations so that the motivations behind certain entries can be ascertained. In the meantime, the Wikimedia Foundation claims that it is about to test a bunch of new trust-based capabilities. Whereas edits to a Wikipedia entry can currently be made by any user and appear immediately to all readers, a planned upgrade will entail the instant implementation of edits made by "trusted" users whose eligibility is based on their level of commitment to Wikipedia. However, this measure could discourage the participation of new users, who would no longer be able to enjoy the pleasure of seeing the instant application of their edits. Also included in the upgrade will be the installation of a system that automatically awards trust ratings to text chunks within a certain article. The software underlying this function uses Wikipedia's edit log to designate a color-coded trust rating to each contributor, with contributors whose edits tend to remain unchanged awarded high ratings, while those whose edits are quickly revised receive low ratings; the idea is that rapidly altered edits are a signal that the information is inaccurate or malicious. One of the system's drawbacks is the risk it runs of punishing editors who correct malicious changes, because the corrections are frequently changed back to the malicious version by the malcontents. The system is therefore designed to determine the decline in an editor's rating that transpired when the edit is modified based on the rating of the other editor involved. Click Here to View Full Article
