Improving the truthfulness and accuracy of citizen reporting is the new initiative being floated by San Francisco-based startup, AllVoices. With the debut of a new credibility algorithm and payment plan for bloggers. The new system will pay anywhere from 25 cents to $2 for every thousand page views.
AllVoices is clocking some impressive stats, with 33,000 landing pages for countries, cities and special topics being covered by a legion of bloggers, who were previously reporting unpaid, according to News.com.au.
AllVoices.com was originally launched in response to the massive earthquake that rocked Pakistan in 2005, but in recent years it has become a global citizen-reporting site mentioned in the same breath as Global Voices and Associated Content. However, the same story from News.com.au, underscored the difficulty of relying on an algorithm and readers to rank the credibility of bloggers.
Contributors are free to post almost anything and their credibility is rated by readers and an in-house algorithm which measures postings against traditional media and other sources.
But throwing the site open to the public has its pitfalls.
One recent post with a high credibility rating said the Ark of The Covenant was about to be unveiled. Other stories cite no sources at all.
Futurist and entrepreneur, Ross Dawson, posted a comprehensive account on the new platform to his blog yesterday.
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