The reliability of information collected from at large Internet users by open collaborative wikis such as Wikipedia has been a subject of widespread debate. This paper provides a practical proposal for improving user confidence in wiki information by coloring the text of a wiki article based on the venerability of the text. This proposal relies on the philosophy that bad information is less likely to survive a collaborative editing process over large numbers of edits. Colorization would provide users with a clear visual cue as to the level of confidence that they can place in particular assertions made within a wiki article.

I got published in this month's issue of First Monday! Make sure you check out the issue because there are a number of good articles in it.

The material my article covers was first presented at last year's PhreakNIC Conference during a talk that Rattle and I gave on various things we're working on. Video of the talk (Google Video) is available. The point where I talk about my reliability system for Wikipedia is about 30 minutes into the presentation.

Puppy smoothies: Improving the reliability of open, collaborative wikis