How do communities evaluate quality???

Communities evaluate quality in multiple ways, depending upon the systems available to them. For example if it is on either of the webcites www.current.com or www.digg.com then one has the choice to 'digg it' or 'bury it' which will register with the relevant servers and boost its populatiry or decrease it! In many ways evaluation by the communities on citizen journalism, is similar to peer assessment for us here at QUT, when in the midst of group assignments.

A second way to assess quality is through comments, which are available to all to view at the bottom of posts or blogs. Here, fellow bloggers have the choice to either add value to the blog, by mentioning more information or points that the author over looked, or critique it, analyse it and raise all the faults if they so desire.

Peer evaluation exists online everywhere. You can see it on Google and Wikipedia especially. However their systems are slightly different to the common blog, as at the head offices of these respectable sources, are people who monitor the content, and if the addage or subtraction of information by one person does not make sense, have a reasonable source or a level of accuracy to it, then it will be deleted. So while citizen journalism can be interactive, it must be of a certain standard...which makes sense, as a comment that is not accademically supported or not proven can potentially damage the credibility of the website, it is posted on.

Enter the acronym of C>A>R>S!

C reditibility

A ccuracy

R easonablness

S upport

You could say this is a guide for what fellow bloggers use to sum up and analyse a blog, commento or any form of citizen journalism.

One - the post must be credible, if there is no credibility -then why is it there, who will read it and how can it be trusted? Secondly, it will damage the credibility of the website it is posted on.

Two - if the post is not accurate, it damages the credibility of the author, the post and the website. Secondly, if it is being posted as 'news' then it needs to be accurate, as the internet is a powerful tool, and information can be shared at a ridiculous pace.

Three - The information, the format and form of posting must be reasonable. The information must be believable.

And lastly - Four - the information must be supported by some form of evidence, an academic who has research to support your argument or claim...or at very least, a fellow blogger or citizen journalist.

CARS all ties into each other as credibility links into accuracy, which links into reasonablness which all in all has to be supported by some form of credible information or evidence to make it any of the above...

There, as shown above, communities can evaluate blogs, websites and citizen journalism through multiple ways of comments, ratings and editing systems, which may or may not be monitored by another level of evaluation....which can all be judged using CARS!