Introduction to SWoTA

Overview

Skeptical WoT Activism is a "clicktivism" project to allow people to help improve the quality of information on the web and discourage misinformation, pseudoscience, scams and other potentially misleading or harmful content.

It makes use of the Web of Trust (WoT) plugin available for most browsers. This plugin allows you to rate websites.

Will I have any real effect?

Yes, there have been over 100 million downloads of WoT and it is widely used. In addition other sites also make use of the information. For example, when following a link from Facebook, the quality of the site is checked with WoT and the user may be warned if the site has a poor rating.

One person alone doesn't help rate a site much, but by organising into a focussed group we have a real opportunity to help users avoid misleading web sites.

In addition, the longer you help out with this project, the more your voting reputation grows and the more powerful your recommendations become (and the power of the group overall).

As we improve the WoT ratings for bad sites, there is even more incentive for WoT to be further adopted, helping even more people.

You have a real opportunity to make a difference.

Joining

The simplest thing you can do to help, with the least time commitment is to join the mailing list:
https://groups.google.com/d/forum/swota

Once you join this list, you will periodically be sent a vetted web site to rate. All you need to do is click the site link and then use the WoT icon to rate the site. It takes only about one minute to rate a site. Instructions will be sent out with the email. You can also read more about rating a site with WoT here: https://www.loomio.org/d/lOQpZ40E/using-wot

If you wish to become more involved, you can also join the Loomio site, which is used to select targets and initiate campaigns:
https://www.loomio.org/g/Ld7Kytz5/skeptical-wot-activism (access to this site is open to anybody).