Trust in collaborative web applications

Collaborative functionality is increasingly prevalent in web applications. Such functionality permits individuals to add–and sometimes modify–web content, often with minimal barriers-to-entry. Ideally, large bodies of knowledge can be amassed and shared in this manner. However, such software also provide a medium for nefarious persons to operate. By determining the extent to which participating content/agents can be trusted, one can identify useful contributions. In this work, we define the notion of trust for collaborative web applications and survey the state-of-the-art for calculating, interpreting, and presenting trust values. Though techniques can be applied broadly, Wikipedia’s archetypal nature makes it a focal point for discussion.

Research highlights► Formalize the notion of ‘trust’ in collaborative web applications. ► Describe various classes of trust computation for collaborative web applications. ► Discuss the relative strengths and weaknesses of the trust computation classes. ► Discuss how the computed trust information can be interpreted. ► Discuss how trust information can be used for the benefit of end-users and the collaborative application itself.