Comments on: Popularity v. Quality: Assessing Information Quality in a Commercialized Internet

By: ShandE

ShandE — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 22:03:01 +0000

An assessment of quality can be subjective. That said, I like to use StumbleUpon. It’s a social media tagging tool
that learns each user’s preferences based on past performance. You can even set up separate accounts so you can place a
singular focus on each one. For example, if you love siamese cats, you can set up an account and post siamese cats as a
favorite. Every time you hit the StumbleUpon button, new pages will be rendered based on stated preferences. As you
continue to give the thumbs up to siamese cat pages, eventually those will be the only kind put forward for your consideration.

By: office girl

office girl — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 02:49:51 +0000

Another example that perhaps takes it far further is the selling of accounts. It’s done on ebay, flickr and forums. When someone has enough ratings or followers or friends or has posted x amount of comments their account is then worth something and are sometimes put up for sale.

By: Popularity v. Quality: Assessing Information Quality in a Commercialized Internet + Paper — Assessing the printability of web sites « ADA Library Internal Communications

Mon, 29 Dec 2008 15:28:09 +0000

[...] Popularity v. Quality: Assessing Information Quality in a Commercialized Internet [...]

By: ResourceShelf » Blog Archive » Popularity v. Quality: Assessing Information Quality in a Commercialized Internet

Sat, 01 Nov 2008 18:32:05 +0000

[...] Popularity v. Quality: Assessing Information Quality in a Commercialized Internet In some ways, the Internet is a giant popularity contest. Worth is assessed by Google PageRank – a formula based primarily on how many people link to a site. Every news site prominently displays the most read, most commented, most e-mailed stories. Social news sites such as Digg, reddit, and del.icio.us exist as an aggregation of what is popular around the web. Another level up, PopUrls serves as an aggregator of aggregators, displaying all the most popular headlines from other news-sharing sites. [...]

By: Paul Kawachi

Paul Kawachi — Sat, 01 Nov 2008 00:32:27 +0000

In education, the challenge is to achieve high quality, widest access, and at affordable cost. We are already aware therefore that wide access (popularity) is not equivalent to high quality. However some universities might spend vast amounts of money on public relations and indeed publishing – which increase its own popularity ranking. Would a rich corporate CEO not donate to the alma mater to get it to the top rank ? Having the people think a place is, has or offers the best quality does not necessarily mean it is the best quality. So then how are we to judge quality, if not by the numbers game – how many first-class degrees did they award last year, how many professors do they have, how many publications do they have ? Even small-town college may offer a student the highest quality education available in the world, despite the lack in sports facilities and congenial student bodies. Leading educationalists around the world suggest that outsourcing examinations to some supra-institutional examination and accrediting agency is a key and at least part of the solution. Colleges and universities would then be on a much more level playing field, and students would feel much more at ease in shopping around for courses they need and can afford to learn from to pass the examination. The second part of the solution would then be to provide free access to open educational resources globally – naturally tagged for ease in access. Together these measures would ensure widest possible open access (quantity) at the highest accredited quality, at affordable cost.