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Berners-Lee Wants Truth Ratings For Websites

Posted by timothy on from the that's-a-lie dept.

holy_calamity writes "While introducing the new World Wide Web Foundation Tim Berners-Lee made also asked for a system of ratings to help people distinguish truth and untruth online. 'On the web the thinking of cults can spread very rapidly,' he said, saying that 'there needed to be new systems that would give websites a label for trustworthiness once they had been proved reliable sources.'"

8 of 535 comments (clear)

  1. I can get you ratings readily enough... by FooAtWFU · · Score: 5, Insightful

    ... but for Facts, not Truth. If it's truth you're looking for, Dr. Tyree's philosophy class is right down the hall.

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    The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
  2. And Then What? by Alex+Pennace · · Score: 5, Insightful

    What is to prevent any such proposed system from becoming yet another popularity contest plagued by those who want to quash unpopular ideas?

    1. Re:And Then What? by Nasajin · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Absolutely nothing. The system is exactly a popularity contest, where truth is determined democratically, rather than by actual relationship to reality.

    2. Re:And Then What? by SimonGhent · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Im curious as to how sites that discuss UFO and/or paranormal phenomena will be rated.

      How about religion: Christianity, Islam, Scientology?

      How about acupuncture or homeopathy?

      Or to be really contentious how about OS feature debates?

      We're talking about a grey area that has little to no concrete evidence for or against. How do you judge truth in this sites except by personal opinion?

      Quite!

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      simon
    3. Re:And Then What? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      And that, my friends, is the exact problem with Web 2.0 (for lack of a better term). Allow "democratic" control of content, and all content eventually converges on boobs and beer, because it is the lowest common denominator for a lot of Internet users. I need only cite digg.com for this point.

  3. Re:I can get you ratings readily enough... by spiffyman · · Score: 5, Insightful

    TFA is /.ed, and MirrorDot's not behaving, so this is a shot in the dark. But I'm reasonably sure we've heard something like this before, and the idea is just as bad now as it was. Berners-Lee is smart enough to know that all systemic rating scales are subject to being gamed. I fail to see how embedding such a scale in the protocol would help, and it's not unlikely that it would hurt the situation.

    Moreover, the WWW as he created it - being a very dumb platform - allows us to implement such a scale at a high level, using user input and so forth.There are already a ton of services that do something very like this. Hell, I can trust the top 10 things on del.icio.us more than I can trust random Google results.

    I donno. I just fail to see the point of this. Yeah, people's capacity to care about facts and details appears to be limited, but I don't think this is the solution.

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    So you can laugh all you want to...
  4. Re:A rating system can't overcome stupidity by Sobrique · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The best argument against any democratic system is a 5 minute conversation with the 'average voter'. This seems little different in that regard.

  5. Re:Just what we need... by cthulu_mt · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "What is Truth?" Asked Pontius Pilate as he washed his hands...

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    Virginia is for lovers. EVE is for griefers.