WikiTrust

Software application

Computing reliability

WikiTrust computes, for each word, three pieces of information:

• The author of the word.
• The revision where the word (and the immediately surrounding text) was inserted. By clicking on a word, visitors are sent to the revision where the word originated.
• The "trust" of the word, indicated by the word background coloring (orange for "untrusted" text, white for "trusted" text). The trust of the word is computed according to how much the word, and the surrounding text, have been revised by users that WikiTrust considers of "high authority." This project is still in a beta test stage.

Criticism

The criticism has been raised that "the software doesn’t really measure trustworthiness, and the danger is that people will trust the software to measure something that it does not." Generally, users whose content persists for a long time without being "reverted" by other editors are deemed more trustworthy by the software. This may mean that users who edit controversial articles subject to frequent reversion may be found to be less trustworthy than others. The software uses a variation of Levenshtein distance to measure how much of user's edit is kept or rearranged, so that users can receive "partial credit" for their work.

Community bias

The software has also been described as measuring the amount of consensus in an article. The community of editors collaborate on articles and revise each other until agreement is reached. Users who make edits which are more similar to the final agreement will receive more reputation. The point is also made that consensus revolves around the beliefs of the community, so that the reputation computed is also a reflection of the community.

References

References

1. (October 2025)
2. [https://github.com/collaborativetrust/WikiTrust/tree/master Browse Files for WikiTrust] on [[GitHub]]
3. [http://wikitrust.soe.ucsc.edu/index.php/Installation_Advice Installation Advice] {{Webarchive. link. (2009-02-13 from the UCSC Online Collaboration Lab)
4. [https://github.com/collaborativetrust/WikiTrust WikiTrust] on GitHub
5. [http://wikitrust.soe.ucsc.edu/home Main Page] {{Webarchive. link. (2021-01-12 from the UCSC Online Collaboration Lab)
6. [http://www.informationweek.com/news/internet/security/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=219500669 Wikipedia Considers Coloring Untested Text], an August 31, 2009 article from ''[[Information Week]]''
7. CACM 54 No. 8 ''Reputation Systems for Open Collaboration'' Luca De Alfaro, Ashutosh Kulshreshtha, Ian Pye, B. Thomas Adler pp 81-7
8. Wiki-Watch.org:'' [http://blog.wiki-watch.de/?p=497 Wiki-Watch.org: a new tool to evaluate the quality of Wikipedia’s articles]'' January 13, 2011.
9. WikiTrust: [http://wikitrust.soe.ucsc.edu/home Wikitrust.soe.ucsc.edu] {{Webarchive. link. (2021-01-12)
10. Andrew G. West (25 November 2012). [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Village_pump_%28technical%29&oldid=525214639#WikiTrust "WikiTrust"] Wikipedia:Village pump (technical).
11. "Computing Wikipedia's Authority". Association of College & Research Libraries.
12. "UCSC Wiki Lab".
13. (September 6, 2007). "Software tests accuracy of Wikipedia entries". [[Canadian Broadcasting Corporation]].
14. B. Adler and L. de Alfaro. A Content-Driven Reputation System for the Wikipedia. ''In'' WWW 2007, Proceedings of the 16th International World Wide Web Conference, ACM Press, 2007.
15. [https://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/08/wikitrust/ Wikipedia to Color Code Untrustworthy Text], an August 30, 2009 article from ''[[Wired News]]''