Despite any number of difficulties imposed by the arrival of hurricane Sandy, the annual Student Design Competition (co-chaired by Stephanie Haas, Candy Schwartz and Katie Shilton) enjoyed its third successful year at the ASIS&T Annual Meeting in Baltimore.

At the opening session, held on Sunday evening, the design topic was introduced. It was characterized as the “Truthiness” challenge:

Assessing veracity and trustworthiness, whether of people, organizations or documents, are difficult challenges in technologically mediated settings. Fake online product reviews, book reviews, restaurant and vacation reviews, Twitter followers, etc., are a growing problem [1]. The gaming of reputation has consequences for a range of online interactions, including commerce, social networks, political discussion and debate, and crisis management. How do we separate the wheat from the chaff? Develop a preliminary design for a review site or crowd sourced information aggregator for the setting of your choice that makes trustworthiness and reputation primary design criteria.