2009/8/31 Nathan Russell <windrunner(a)gmail.com>om>: The tool has been around for a while. I guess the news is that it is being added to the site itself, rather than being run by a third party. I think that is news to me if it is true (I may have just forgotten about it, though).

Which is what I meant, sorry. If I It would also be useful for catching vandalism interspersed with good content (or at least telling which sentences to look closely at, without reading a 30 kb article). Pakaran

In the absence of any actual validation that this measures "trust' or "reliability" or "quality", i am very skeptical it would be highly inappropriate to integrate into our gadgets. David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG On Sun, Aug 30, 2009 at 9:44 PM, Andrew Gray<andrew.gray(a)dunelm.org.uk> wrote:

Either way, I would like the score to NOT be published. I'd hate to have the community divided over a piece of software. Emily On Aug 30, 2009, at 8:32 PM, Brian wrote: > On Sun, Aug 30, 2009 at 7:31 PM, Brian &lt;Brian.Mingus(a)colorado.edu&gt; > wrote: > >> >> >> On Sun, Aug 30, 2009 at 6:24 PM, Keith Old &lt;keithold(a)gmail.com&gt; >> wrote: >> >>> Folks, >>> >>> http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/08/wikitrust/ >>> >>> Wired reports: >>> >>> >>> *"Starting this fall, you’ll have a new reason to trust the >>> information >>> you >>> find on Wikipedia: An optional feature called “WikiTrust” will >>> color code >>> every word of the encyclopedia based on the reliability of its >>> author and >>> the length of time it has persisted on the page.* >>> >>> *More than 60 million people visit the free, open-access >>> encyclopedia each >>> month, searching for knowledge on 12 million pages in 260 >>> languages. But >>> despite its popularity, >>> **Wikipedia*< >>> http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/08/wikitrust/www.wikipedia.org >>> > >>> * has long suffered criticism from those who say it’s not reliable. >>> Because >>> anyone with an internet connection can contribute, the site is >>> subject to >>> vandalism, bias and misinformation. And edits are anonymous, so >>> there’s no >>> easy way to separate credible information from fake content >>> created by >>> vandals.* >>> >>> *Now, researchers from the **Wiki Lab* <http://trust.cse.ucsc.edu/ >>> >* at >>> the >>> University of California, Santa Cruz have created a system to help >>> users >>> know when to trust Wikipedia—and when to reach for that dusty >>> Encyclopedia >>> Britannica on the shelf. Called >>> **WikiTrust*<http://wikitrust.soe.ucsc.edu/index.php/Main_Page> >>> *, the program assigns a color code to newly edited text using an >>> algorithm >>> that calculates author reputation from the lifespan of their past >>> contributions. It’s based on a simple concept: The longer >>> information >>> persists on the page, the more accurate it’s likely to be.* >>> >>> *Text from questionable sources starts out with a bright orange >>> background, >>> while text from trusted authors gets a lighter shade. As more >>> people view >>> and edit the new text, it gradually gains more “trust” and turns >>> from >>> orange >>> to white."* >>> >>> More in story >>> >>> *Regards* >>> >>> ** >>> >>> *Keith* >>> >> >> >> What's interesting about WikiTrust is that a trust score is >> computed for >> each individual. I wonder if these will be made public, and if so, >> how they >> will change the community of editors. It seems likely that they >> will not be >> made public. However, since the algorithm is published and I >> believe the >> source code as well anyone with the hardware could compute and >> publish how >> trusted each community member is. >> > > > _______________________________________________ > WikiEN-l mailing list > WikiEN-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

Agree - trust scores are likely to be divisive and easily gamed. I do not think "trust score league tables" will help the project. However as they are also good ways to spot problems and see the "reliability profile" of an article on review, perhaps some way might be found to make some of their results available, in some limited manner? Admin only?? On the assumption admins are trusted anyway so they don't have such a vested interest in numbers, but they might be interested in problem editorship. The other view is if you can see the aging or trust profile of the article, that's all you need. low trust-score users may simply be legitimate but inexperienced, bold and reverted, etc. There are other ways to ID problem editors, and if you need to know who wrote a specific sentence you can always use WikiBlame to check the history. So overall I would say you don't need to publish trust scores of users, and even telling a user their own trust score is merely a toehold into self promotion/gaming at best. People should edit, not be encouraged to keep scorecards..... FT2 On Mon, Aug 31, 2009 at 2:37 AM, Nathan Russell &lt;windrunner(a)gmail.com&gt;wrote;wrote:

Being a user of vandal fighting tools, I like that idea. Emily On Aug 30, 2009, at 8:48 PM, Thomas Dalton wrote:

On Sun, Aug 30, 2009 at 7:48 PM, Brian &lt;Brian.Mingus(a)colorado.edu&gt; wrote: 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.

On Sun, Aug 30, 2009 at 8:28 PM, Thomas Dalton &lt;thomas.dalton(a)gmail.com&gt;wrote;wrote: people to be bold. This is an inherently inclusionist perspective where we assume that bold editors who write awful, inaccurate or mediocre stuff are still making valuable contributions. They are either contributing cruft which is easy to get rid of, or they are contributing seeds for some future editor to improve, or seeds for conversations on the talk page that will in time result in high quality content. Or if we're lucky, they are not only bold but really smart and only capable of producing brilliant prose. In short, in the limit of time any contribution is a good contribution. Even the worst contribution you can think of (which is probably engineered to stick but blatantly false) is going to eventually be tagged as vandalism and will help contribute to future intelligent algorithms that automatically weed out vandalism. going to want to think more carefully about their contribution. On average they want all of their edits to remain in the encyclopedia for a long time. They might not want to be bold and thoughtless because that means they are simply planting a seed for another editor to improve on, making it easier for that other editor to improve their reputation at the stake of your reputation. You might want to start your seed of an edit as a draft and improve it over time, only finally submitting it to the encyclopedia after it is already high quality and likely to stick. I tend to think that the latter version is healthier than encouraging everyone to contribute every thought that they have. Similar to the [[Foot-in-the-door technique]], first we convinced you to edit this page, now we'd like to ask you to spend some time thinking about your edit before you submit it. If you do, your reputation will improve and your peers will respect your edits more in the future.

On Mon, Aug 31, 2009 at 3:28 AM, Thomas Dalton&lt;thomas.dalton(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: 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

On Sun, Aug 30, 2009 at 9:08 PM, Carcharoth &lt;carcharothwp(a)googlemail.com&gt;wrote;wrote: 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.

On Sun, Aug 30, 2009 at 9:31 PM, Carcharoth &lt;carcharothwp(a)googlemail.com&gt;wrote;wrote: If you have questions like that you should probably look into the website and the paper. I think that you'll find they realized most of these issues and incorporated them into the algo. They already detect reverts so it doesn't make sense to punish the reverter.

Sometimes. However, on new page patrol, I'll sometimes completely rewrite a page, both for practice and because I see an inkling of potential in a page that would normally be speedily deleted via SNOW via AfD in a heartbeat. In other words, a well-meaning contributor ALREADY can't be trusted...according to a piece of software. Emily On Aug 30, 2009, at 10:08 PM, Carcharoth wrote:

A bit like cryptography? If it needs obscurity to withstand gaming it's worthless? A metric like "this user's edits are routinely reverted" or "routinely reverted on topic X" might be useful. Ditto a study of words used in the revert edit's summary. Beyond that I'm not convinced it's feasible to calculate a score for trust, just because editors can edit in many different areas and ways. As an extreme example, a FA editor or project page developer who uses BRD to achieve more quicker, will score very differently from a POV warrior who writes obscure but slightly skewed pages, or a sock user. the page text will show reversion, recreation or aging which is useful... but the author's trust rating will be very variable. FT2 On Mon, Aug 31, 2009 at 2:48 AM, Brian &lt;Brian.Mingus(a)colorado.edu&gt; wrote: