SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. – Before the Internet was used to watch porn, check out your house from space, “pwn noobs” in World of Warcraft, or find singles in your local community, it was promoted primarily as an “Information Superhighway,” one that would bring powerful advances in education and the exchange of information. One website that has carried out that early mission with mixed results is now making new moves to improve the reliability of its information.Wikipedia has announced that it will offer optional color codes in its entries to help readers gauge the reliability of information. The color codes system is part of a program called Wiki Lab, based at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

Wikipedia is an online “encyclopedia” of sorts, supported by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation, and it allows users to edit almost any entry – resulting in a large number of entries, but also resulting in many entries with unreliable or questionable information. By using the Wiki Labs color code system, Wikipedia hopes to pass on to its users something about the reliability of an author or editor.

The reliability of the author or editor will be established partially by how long that person’s edits persist on Wikipedia without objections from other editors. Unreliable entries will be denotes by dark orange text, with edits from more “reliable” authors getting a lighter shade.

According to PCWorld.com, Wikipedia plans to roll out the system first for entries that relate to living people – an area that has traditionally resulted in a lot of unreliable entries.

Many adult entertainment companies and personalities maintain Wikipedia pages, hoping to find additional exposure through the site that attracts more than 2 million people every day.