The authenticity of data

Is what you're reading online true, false, or somewhere in between?

The Internet has done wonders in terms of making information accessible to people all over the world. Today, bloggers, citizen reporters, and even members of the Swivel community are responsible for adding to the so-called data deluge.  As more and more people pump information online, should we be asking the question: how much of it is actually reliable?

To determine which blogs are more trustworthy, Technorati assigns each one an "authority number".  The more people that link to a blog, the higher the number.  Of 4,969,251 blogs, more than 75,000 have an authority number of 50 or more, which means that at least 50 other people found their blog worth linking to.

At Swivel, data that comes from our Official Sources, such as OECD or WHO, is branded with an official source badge to let our users know that the data is coming from a reliable source.  Swivel members can also link back to a data source for added credibility.  Of the 13,138 data sets on Swivel (as of 9/23/08), 9,049 have been uploaded by the Swivel community and 4,087 have been uploaded by official sources.

While both systems have their benefits and flaws, a number or a badge can only tell you so much. In the end it's really up to you to weed out what's valuable from what's rubbish.