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Algorithm Rates Trustworthiness of Wikipedia Pages

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the getting-it-right dept.

paleshadows writes "Researchers at UCSC developed a tool that measures the trustworthiness of each Wikipedia page. Roughly speaking, the algorithm analyzes the entire 7-year user-editing-history and utilizes the longevity of the content to learn which contributors are the most reliable: If your contribution lasts, you gain 'reputation,' whereas if it's edited out, your reputation falls. The trustworthiness of a newly inserted text is a function of the reputation of all its authors, a heuristic that turned out to be successful in identifying poor content. The interested reader can take a look at this demonstration (random page with white/orange background marking trusted/untrusted text, respectively; note "random page" link at the left for more demo pages), this presentation (pdf), and this paper (pdf)."

5 of 175 comments (clear)

  1. Light Bulb Moment by dsginter · · Score: 5, Funny

    Someone should make a wikipedia entry for this algorithm to see how trustworthy it is.

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  2. Hmmm... A reputation metric... by Colin+Smith · · Score: 3, Funny

    It'd be nice if it could be generalised to other sites...

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    Deleted
  3. Seems to work ... by Purity+Of+Essence · · Score: 5, Funny

    Seems to work, the entire page turned orange.

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    +0 Meh
  4. hmmm... by PJ1216 · · Score: 5, Funny

    They should just call it wiki-karma.

  5. Goddamn... by gowen · · Score: 5, Funny

    How did they pass up the chance to name this algorithm "Truthiness"?

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