Wikipedia has become one of the biggest websites and one of the most relied-upon sources of information. Many critics, though, point at the site's problems with inaccuracies, vandalism, biased content and the likes and say that it's far from a reliable source of information. While this isn't representative for the majority of the content on Wikipedia, even the people in charge recognize this problem and have been taking steps towards solving it, most recently planning to introduce color coding for the various edits in an article to reflect how trustworthy the information is.

The new feature, spotted by Wired, is based on the WikiTrust plug-in, which has been available since November 2008 for wiki operators to implement. Created by the researchers at Wiki Lab the method allows users to see how reliable a piece of information may be, based on several factors like how long it has been on the site and its author's reputation. The main reasoning is that the longer the information has been available at the site the more accurate it's likely to be, as any edits that would prove questionable would be removed by Wikipedia's users or editors.

It works rather simply: when turned on, the feature would color the text that is the least reliable with bright orange and then, as the text stays on the site longer, the orange becomes more faded eventually turning completely white. When the feature is enabled, hovering the mouse over a certain word will reveal its author while also color coding the different portions of the text.

WikiTrust is already being used by a number of wikis but, as the algorithm continues to improve, the feature is expected to see a wide rollout on Wikipedia this fall, provided it can meet the requirements of the very heavily used site for performance. The new feature comes as Wikipedia is already planning to introduce editorial approval for articles on living people in the short-term future following a testing period.