Trust in Wikipedia and the Internet in general

The official motto of the Internet can be “ do not believe everything you read, ” but people very slowly learn what they are skeptical about and believe in.

A tool called " WikiTrust " - this tool allows users to evaluate information on Wikipedia , indicating their trust by highlighting colors.

The "Wikimedia Foundation" also announced that the changes made to the information about living people will be checked by editors.

This shows the intention to make information on the Internet more accurate and reliable. The World Wide Web Consortium has published a framework that will help any website quickly establish copyrights and levels of trust in content.

" WikiTrust " was developed by researchers at the University of California, colors are chosen so that the level of confidence in both the author and the information published by him is clear.

The algorithm calculates how the author is rated by the community and highlights in a specific color. The algorithm takes into account the reputation of other users who left an opinion about the author. If an editor with a low reputation edits information in the author’s post, the author loses very little reputation.

White background, for example, means that this text was viewed by many editors who have not made any changes, and from here - this author can be trusted . Orange shades mean doubts that cause controversy over the authenticity of the text, the author.

Luca de Alfaro is a professor at the University of Chicago Santa Cruz, he participated in the development of " WikiTrust ". He says that most Internet users want more reliable information.

“ Essentially, we want to know who did what, ” he says. And the innovation will allow to publish or edit information so that everyone could appreciate it.

Also, developers are working on a version of " WikiTrust ", which will be able to analyze and evaluate all the contents of the English version of Wikipedia from its very foundation.

The full version will be released in a few months, but it remains unclear whether the tool will work on the servers of the university or on the " Wikimedia Foundation ". The principles of WikiTrust algorithms can be used on almost any site with shared content.

In order to implement online trust building, the Protocol for Web Description Resources (POWDER) was created, which was released by the World Wide Web Consortium .

Powder uses simpler technology than WikiTrust. Using Powder you can immediately determine where the information on the site comes from and how to use it.

For example, the site may report that the page contains medical information from certain experts. Also, he can report that the site can view on mobile devices.

Powder will be designed to integrate into any site and service. Users will be able to install a plug-in that can automatically verify information and inform other users about the results. Also, search engines will be able to recognize descriptions made by the tool, allowing users to provide the most reliable and relevant information.

" At first, in order to determine the validity of the document, Powder had to find the author of this document, " says Phil Archer, a manager of i-sieve technologies, who also participated in the development of Powder.

We were in favor of developing the idea of ​​a kind of author authentication in the program.

Ed Chi (Ed Chi), the principal researcher at the Palo Alto Research Center, believes that educating users of such tools can be a major obstacle to their distribution.

" A study of human-computer interaction suggests that people are not very eager for this ," he says.

For example, Chi says that very little progress has been made in teaching people to avoid online scams and not leave credit card information on sites that do not encrypt data. " The general state of affairs is rather depressing ," he says.

Even if Internet users learn to evaluate information online - this will not solve all the problems. " Trust is a very human opinion, " he says.

Technologies, I think, will never be able to guarantee that what you see on the screen is absolutely true.