So you know you're getting the best possible information: a tool that increases Wikipedia credibility

  • Authors:

  • Peter Pirolli;Evelin Wollny;Bongwon Suh

  • Affiliations:

  • Palo Alto Research Center, Palo Alto, CA, USA;Knowledge Media Research Center, Tuebingen, Germany;Palo Alto Research Center, Palo Alto, CA, USA

  • Venue:
  • Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
  • Year:
  • 2009

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Abstract

An experiment was conducted to study how credibility judgments about Wikipedia are affected by providing users with an interactive visualization (WikiDashboard) of article and author editing history. Overall, users who self-reported higher use of Internet information and higher rates of Wikipedia usage tended to produce lower credibility judgments about Wikipedia articles and authors. However, use of WikiDashboard significantly increased article and author credibility judgments, with effect sizes larger than any other measured effects of background media usage and attitudes on Wikiepedia credibility. The results suggest that increased exposure to the editing/authoring histories of Wikipedia increases credibility judgments.