WikiTrust: Content-Driven Reputation for the Wikipedia (original) (raw)

WikiTrust: Content-Driven Reputation for the Wikipedia B. Thomas Adler The Wikipedia was initially created to promote collaboration between writers before submitting their work to a peer review process, to address complaints about the speed of peer review. Ironically, the criticism most widely levied against the Wikipedia is the lack of accountability for authors, and the potential to misinform readers. There is a large community around the Wikipedia project which actively fixes errors as they are discovered, but an unending stream of vandals and spammers chip away at the good will of volunteers who maintain the project for the collective good. We suggest that vandalism detection systems can be used to help direct the volunteer effort on changes more likely to be a problem, making more efficient use of the project's human Thanks to Luca, who never gave up when I needed him and stuck with me through the ups and downs of the years. And to my labmates and co-authors, Marco, Vishwa, Ian, Pritam, Leandro, Krish, and Axel: your moral (and research) support was invaluable at so many points for keeping me engaged. Karen provided endless edits to my grammar and diction, often to my chagrin. Thanks to each of you: I learned a great deal and appreciate all that you shared with me. There are a few heroes that saw me through the darkest hours; I am indebted to you for your caring when mine failed me. And there are so many friends and family, new and old, that were characters in this adventure and gave me their support and encouragement and compassion. You all have my deepest thanks. I am the luckiest one. The text of this dissertation includes excerpts of previously published material; copyright of this material remains with its respective holders and appears here with their permission. Chapters 3, 4, and 6 expand on the initial paper presenting our contentdriven reputation ideas for the Wikipedia [2]. Chapter 5 is a reprint of our investigation into contribution measures [5]. Chapter 7 covers similar ground as (and includes some material from) two previously published works [4, 3]. Illustrations from PhD comics are copyright Jorge Cham [16], with many thanks.