Wikipedia Will Use Colors to Add Layers of Trust to its Articles

 By 
Stan Schroeder
 on 
Wikipedia Will Use Colors to Add Layers of Trust to its Articles

Back in 2007, we wrote about a plan to add different colors to various Wikipedia edits, signifying the level of their trustworthiness. It's easier to trust editors with a high number of entries and revisions than those who are new to the site, and now registered users will be able to easily discern between the two by looking at the color of the text's background.

If an untrusted source adds text to Wikipedia, it will have a bright orange background; text from trusted editors will be lighter. The background color will change over time; as more people view and edit the new entry, its background will slowly change color to white, signifying that it is getting more and more trustworthy. This feature, called WikiTrust, will be available for registered Wikipedia users.

Accuracy and bias on Wikipedia have always been a source of debate surrounding the largest online encyclopedia. After all, if anyone can edit it, it means that some degree of misinformation will always slip through. Wikipedia's army of volunteers, however, have so far managed to do a pretty good job at keeping this enormous body of text relatively clean, with only a handful of incidents in its entire history.

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