Degradation of Information Quality Online - Mathematical Model for That, How About An App?

Degradation of Information Quality Online - Mathematical Model for That, How About An App?

Let's have a frank discussion on the future of online publishing and the challenges we face with information overload, and the degradation of the very information we need to survive in the digital age. These are serious issues which must be solved through a cross-pollination of strategies.

In water quality science GIS information specialists use specific mathematical modeling to explain, predict, and understand the degradation of ground water and pollution. Well, since we have specific algorithms and modeling the degradation of water supplies, what about another serious degradation problem we have - the increasing poor quality of information online due to social networking and the race downhill to the lowest common denominator? Okay so, let's talk shall we?

What if we started by observing the rate of decline of IQ or information quality as described by this paper reviewing WikiPedia; "Information Quality Work Organization in Wikipedia," by Besiki Stvilia, Michael B. Twidale, Linda C. Smith, and Les Gasser. Next what if we reviewed some of the ERSI GIS work being done to track water degradation, and the mathematical prediction models used?

Now then, one interesting paper to read about a layered mathematical modeling strategy might be; "A GIS-Coupled Hydrological Model System for the Watershed Assessment of Agricultural Nonpoint and Point Sources of Pollution" by Mauro Di Luzio, Raghavan Srinivasan, and Jeffrey G Arnold. Another would be; "Groundwater vulnerability and risk mapping using GIS, modeling and a fuzzy logic tool," by RCM Nobre, et. al.

Okay so, is it possible to create a mathematical formula of how fast information degrades? We know from experience that if we put a group of people in a room and have one person tell a story, and that person then tells the next and so on, that by the time it gets to the end person the story is nothing similar. This is the evolution of information degradation in real time. We can see it and reproduce the same resultant in any language or in any culture in the world.

Whereas, it is true that in some cultures or some languages the information degradation moves more slowly, today we are dealing with the Internet. The Internet is a common footprint, and the standard language for the Internet is English currently. Therefore more things are equal than not, when we're talking about the global decline of the quality of information. Should we be putting some empirical data to this degradation?

Which mathematical formula should we use? We know the problem exists, we can see it, and inherently know it while we read things online or search for information, or even pick up the daily newspaper. It doesn't matter if the information is online or in print, it's essentially the same problem coming up same source.

Today, newspaper reporters go online to help them verify information, and get more insight into the article they are preparing. If all information starts and ends on the Internet, and if we know we have a problem with the declining quality of that information, then we need a metric to determine how fast it is declining, where it declines the quickest, and then try to come to some viable solution to prevent it from happening so quickly, or in the perfect utopian world; not at all.

I hope you will please consider all this and think on it. If you'd like to discuss this at a much higher level you may shoot me an e-mail. After all, if we don't fix the problem I believe the publishing industry will perish, and there is a potentially eventuality that the Internet will become so overladen with poor quality information that it will be unusable by today's standards.

Lance Winslow has launched a new provocative series of eBooks on Publishing Topics. Lance Winslow is a retired Founder of a Nationwide Franchise Chain, and now runs the Online Think Tank; http://www.worldthinktank.net

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_(By Lance Winslow).