Could a Reputation System Improve Wikipedia?

Acidus writes, "There is an excellent article in this month's First Monday about using reputation systems to limit the effects of vandalism on public wikis like Wikipedia. It discusses the benefits and weaknesses of various algorithms to judge how 'reliable' a given piece of text or an edit is. From the article: 'I propose that it would be better to provide Wikipedia users with a visual cue that enables them to see what assertions in an article have, in fact, survived the scrutiny of a large number of people, and what assertions are relatively fresh, and may not be as reliable. This would enable Wikipedia users to take more advantage of the power of the collaborative editing process taking place without forcing that process to change.'"

Comments

Congress & Christians

[EmbeddedJanitor]

You just have to look at how Christian groups etc use their powers to influence what could be a democratic process. The truth etc soon dies in favour of what is politically correct or is acceptable to people with enough passion to screw things up.