Researchers at the University of California at Santa Cruz have built a test extension called WikiTrust that evaluates every word on Wikipedia and highlights text that was added by authors with a less than stellar reputation.
The research is only live on a cached copy of Wikipedia right now,
but it targets what's possibly the biggest need Wikipedia has as it
tries to grow into greater mainstream use - trust in an open system.
Reputation in this case is determined by an author's history of past
contributions - getting your additions to the site quickly reverted
away hurts your reputation in the system and casts doubt on what you
add to other articles in the future. Suspect text is color coded in
different shades of orange and clicking on orange text will load the
version of a page where that text was added. We think this is a really
exciting idea.
First blogged about on the fantastic group blog SmartMobs,
WikiTrust has the potential to be applied to any wiki anywhere. The
researchers building it say they are now working on a version that will
process the live content of Wikipedia in real time.