Authority Facets

HCIR 2007Pete Bell

The Wiki authority challenge

“The user who visits Wikipedia to learn about some subject, to confirm some matter of fact, is rather in the position of a visitor to a public restroom.

It may be obviously dirty, so that he knows to exercise great care, or it may seem fairly clean, so that he may be lulled into a false sense of security. What he certainly does not know is who has used the facilities before him.”

-Robert McHenry, former Editor in Chief, the Encyclopædia Britannica

Faceted authority

“fairly clean”“fairly clean”

“obviously dirty”“obviously dirty”

Who is an authority?

Authority is not binary

Depending on the task at hand,• I trust Olaf for finance content but not engineering•Phil is often right, but I’ll need to confirm it•I don’t trust Panhead to be accurate, but he might lead me to a good source

Faceted authority

Reputation Rating Membership in a group Social network link analysis

Certifications Skills Seniority Title

2 implementations of faceted authority

Records have authority facets> navigate records by authority facets

Facets have authority facets> navigate by authority facet of facets