How do communities evaluate quality?

Communities evaluate quality by voting on websites on whether they like or don’t like the news stories published. Sites such as digg.com and current.com allow users to post newsworthy content. Viewers can then watch videos or read stories and decide on whether they like them or not. They almost instantaneously get feedback from their posts and this determines the quality of the news story.Most of this content is created on the previously mentioned sites are created by an average audience, not necessary journalists meaning that content may not always be accurate. However, this is where the evaluating comes which determines the quality of the posts.

The quality of content that is published can be reviewed and commented upon by fellow users and participants. There are many similarities between open source software and citizen journalism namely:

• The production process is open to all participants
  
• Through the “power of the eyeballs”, the cream of ideas and articles will rise to the top – peer assessment and review enables users to spot errors, misinterpretations, new ideas, views and opinions. I.e. an article that receives a lot of hits will automatically rise to the spotlight
  
• Content is always unfinished, there is always new information emerging that can be used to update the information