Could a Reputation System Improve Wikipedia?

Acidus writes, "There is an excellent article in this month's First Monday about using reputation systems to limit the effects of vandalism on public wikis like Wikipedia. It discusses the benefits and weaknesses of various algorithms to judge how 'reliable' a given piece of text or an edit is. From the article: 'I propose that it would be better to provide Wikipedia users with a visual cue that enables them to see what assertions in an article have, in fact, survived the scrutiny of a large number of people, and what assertions are relatively fresh, and may not be as reliable. This would enable Wikipedia users to take more advantage of the power of the collaborative editing process taking place without forcing that process to change.'"

How about one for /.?

[ackthpt]

I mean, we could all moderate/evaluate the slashdot editors on their choice of stories and keep stats, like onna baseball card.

CmdrTaco
Dupes: 23
Veiled ads as news: 18
Old news: 17
Allowed Bad Grammar: 2,980
Allowed Bad Spelling: 9,874,376

Yes

[neonprimetime]

Could a Reputation System Improve Wikipedia?

YES - It works on /.

Re:Yes

[treeves]

Yeah, new improved: with Wiki-karma whores!

Re:I can give you the answer without even RTFA

[Somatic]

I was tempted to mod that down cause it would have been funny. But no one but me would have got it.

Re:Not a complete solution

[Kesch]

On Wikipedia, pages relating to quantum mechanics are sometimes vandalized.

Actually, every article on quantum mechanics exists in a state between vandalized and not vandalized. By viewing it you colapse the waveform and change it's value. Now, there is a good probability that it will turn out unvandalized, but as you have stated it occasionaly collapses into a vandalized article. After you leave the page, Wikipedia runs complex calculations in it's improbability engine and sends the article back into a quantum state.

P.S. This is presented as per my understanding of quantum mechanics which I learned entirely from Wikipedia. It may be wrong however as my viewing might have caused it to appear in a vandalized state.

P.P.S

Imagine Slashdot setting up a wiki where we had to determine which was better - Debian or Gentoo (or Ubuntu etc.), BSD or Linux, vi or emacs

Debian, Linux, emacs. That wasn't so hard. (Anyone who disagrees is a terrorist.)

Re:I can give you the answer without even RTFA

[geekoid]

Wow, worst analogy on slashdot ever.

The wright brothers weren't trying to overcome social issues, they were overcoming a technical issue.

You can not solve social issues with technology. Social issue aren't always rational.

I have gamed slashdot karma many times.
In days of yor, I could intentional get a 50 karma in a week, and a -49 karma the next.
I can do it today.

Don't believe me? mod me up. ;)

Re:What about...

[tonyr1988]

Better yet, we could use MySpace color schemes.

• Oldest: black with jet black background
• Little newer: Yellow on orange
• Tad bit newer: Light blue with seventeen exclamation points
• Couple days old: ALL CAPS BABY
• Posted today: Embedded into a crappy Flash movie from www.pimpandrockoutyourwikipediavids.com

Then it will be truly distinguishable.