Information Madness

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 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.

So to become a more trustworthy source, Wikipedia will use color codes to indicate the reliability of an article's author. Called "WikiTrust," the optional feature will assign a color code to newly-edited text, based on the author's reputation.

Starting this fall, text from new or questionable sources will be signalled with a bright orange background, while trusted authors will get a lighter shade. The more people view and edit new text on Wikipedia, the more "trust" the initial edits get, turning from orange to white. This way, things that people agree with more often will stick around as reliable information.

The new Wikipedia color-coding feature is built around the WikiTrust tool, which can measure an author's trustworthiness. This is accomplished by looking at how long an author's edit persists over time without objections from other editors. Authors also must build a reputation score between zero and nine, based on their past contributions.