Researchers from the University of Southampton have published a study in which they argue that crowdsourcing information can be improved through use of incentives. In "Making crowdsourcing more reliable" Dr Victor Naroditskiy and Professor Nick Jennings and others propose to incentivize crowdsourcing tasks to improve the verification of credible contributors.
"Search. The final frontier. These are the voyages of the frustrated Web surfer. Its five-year mission: To explore strange new content, to seek out new ideas and new expressions. To boldly know when someone is pulling our leg or being sincere." I'm not waiting for William Shatner to record that monologue but there are days when I can almost hear it rolling about in my head. Search is such a universal thing for people -- we were born to it. We resonate with memories of failed searches every time we hear someone gasp, "What did I do with my keys?"
Deep Web Interferometry compares curves in trendlines from synchronized multiple data sources. Interferometric analysis of Web metrics data increases the clarity of meaningful data points by isolating events. For example, given two Websites that track a popular sport, one Website may experience a weekly peak in traffic on Monday and the other site may have two smaller peaks on Wednesday and Saturday. However, during a major tournament both sites experience sharp peaks during the games. These game-driven data spikes appear in both sites' trendlines.
Webometrics faces many challenges, not the least of which is a dearth of tools capable of measuring the Web with any degree of accuracy. Most academic and professional Webometrics analysts alike have had to rely on a mix of search engine downloads and query operators. Yet even analysts from organizations with their own crawlers are challenged by the limitations of methodologies and technologies.
