akatoo Reputation Management & Scoring System

At akatoo, our primary goal is to set information free. Each answer on this site is potentially a valuable entry in a growing base of validated, reliable and high quality knowledge. Other web sites present you with raw information, but akatoo is different. We don’t just compile information; we compile information you can trust.

The key to accurate information validation is the akatoo Reputation Management & Scoring System (ARMSS) — a sophisticated, proprietary algorithm that analyzes community feedback with mathematical precision. It’s an elegant solution to the problem of data reliability that plagues many other information sources on the Web.

ARMSS examines nearly every aspect of community interaction in detail using an artificial intelligence engine.Statistical models of rating trends and patterns are constantly updated, allowing the system to dynamically compensate for local and global biases as they appear. Natural Language Processing techniques are also used to correlate and compare similar topics, reducing redundancy in the system and building bridges between islands of otherwise fragmented knowledge. And each user’s individual expertise is measured on an intuitive yet granular scale so that other users can quickly determine which voices to trust.

Within the akatoo Knowledge Exchange, expertise is measured in International Knowledge Units, or IKU. A user’s global IKU score is a reliable summary of how valuable the community has found his or her contributions as a whole. The global IKU score will be represented across the site by a visual image of a light bulb (which glows brighter for higher IKU). But IKU are also used to reflect specific, categorical knowledge.

We believe that individual knowledge is not universal. An expert in quantum physics may know little about auto mechanics, for example. As a member of the akatoo community, you may contribute to dozens or even hundreds of knowledge categories. All of this participation will contribute to your global IKU score, but an IKU score is calculated individually for each category of knowledge as well. This helps other users better understand where your specific expertise lies.

Many of the factors determining the IKU score are proprietary, but there are some general patterns of behavior that contribute to high IKU's. For example, achieving a particularly high IKU score within one or more specific knowledge categories will increase global IKU’s more quickly than smaller contributions to many different categories. In general, some of the most common interactions contributing to a high IKU score in the akatoo algorithm are:

• Asking novel questions
• Answering questions with accurate information
• Rating answers provided by others

Both ARMSS and the IKU scoring formula are self-tuning to adapt to the constantly changing patterns in community behaviors and feedback. This approach ensures that over time the most accurate, highest quality, credible Knowledge rises to the top and stays there. Essentially, akatoo is a specialized environment, carefully engineered to promote the Survival of the Smartest™.