7/31/2009 PERMALINK
New bot can tell you who's posts you can trust and who's you can't A team of European researchers has developed an algorithm that ranks the expertise of users and can spot those who are using a site only to spam. The technique works in a way similar to Amazon's reputation engine or the ratings of Wikipedia pages, but it evaluates users based on a new set of criteria that makes intuitive assumptions about experts. The algorithm draws on a method applied in ranking Web pages, but takes it an interesting step further, says Jon Kleinberg, a professor of computer science at Cornell University in Ithaca, NY, who was not involved with the work. "It distinguishes between 'discoverers' and 'followers,'" Kleinberg says, "focusing on users who are the first to tag something that subsequently becomes popular."