2019/Grants/Explicit credibility signal data on wikipedia
Title:
Explicit credibility signal data on wikipedia
Name:
Sandro Hawke
Wikimedia username:
Sandro_Hawke
E-mail address:
sandro
w3.org
Resume:
Geographical impact:
global
Type of project:
Other
What is your idea?
Let's connect wikipedians to the emerging ecosystem of credibility data. In particular, let's draw on their expertise and diligence to create community-sourced credibility data, where individual wikipedians express credibility signals and interact with such expressions from others. From this seed community, this approach has the potential to rapidly grow to global scale.
Why is it important?
tbd
Is your project already in progress?
We are developing the relevant concepts and tools (as seen at https://credweb.org) but have not begun a deployment to the wikipedia community.
How is it relevant to credibility and Wikipedia? (max 500 words)
tbd
What is the ultimate impact of this project?
tbd
Could it scale?
Yes, this plan is phenomenally scalable.
It is based on existing social practices, where each individual manages their own credibility assessment process (deciding what to believe), using what they can glean from their surroundings, including their social network. This process scales linearly with the number of individuals, with each individual deciding how much of their own resources to devote to each assessment they make. Adding computers and networking to this existing human process should greatly improve the efficiency and accuracy of this process, without altering this scaling behavior.
In its approach to decentralization, this design avoids any central bottleneck. Every individual and organization is free to deploy as much human and computing resources as they choose, without needing approval or support from us or anyone else. This allows the kind of scaling we see in the web and email, which are similarly decentralized, but much faster since the underlying infrastructure is already in place. If the systems provide sufficient value to users, as expected, this approach might grow to global scale in a matter of months.
The pace of scaling may also be quite rapid because it naturally spreads over social connections and social media. While it relies on software, which is often slow to develop, the software can come from any source, reducing this risk. Because of the social connections, the person-to-person spread may resemble the spread of ideas (memes) more than the slower spread of technology platforms.
Why are you the people to do it?
I bring experience and expertise in all the necessary challenge areas, including credibility signals, community development, web application development, decentralized systems, and consensus process.
What is the impact of your idea on diversity and inclusiveness of the Wikimedia movement?
tbd
What are the challenges associated with this project and how you will overcome them?
tbd
How much money are you requesting?
10k USD
How will you spend the money?
To support my time
How long will your project take?
2-8 months, depending on how community members react. They may adopt it quickly or need carefully-constructed on-ramps.
Have you worked on projects for previous grants before?
Yes, my work has been primarily grant funded for many years. Some highlights with web pages maintained by others:
- 2018 Google (see "W3C") https://www.blog.google/outreach-initiatives/google-news-initiative/elevating-quality-journalism/
- 2013 Knight Foundation https://knightfoundation.org/articles/introducing-crosscloud-project-get-your-data-out-silos/
- 2012 NSF https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1313789
- 2005 DARPA http://xml.coverpages.org/ni2005-02-21-a.html