PageRank was a huge leap in knowing which web pages were valuable. I'm disappointed we don't have something similar for detecting authority, and measuring the

PageRank was a huge leap in knowing which web pages were valuable. I'm disappointed we don't have something similar for detecting authority, and measuring the opinions of those with authority. For instance, if there were an article about chess, I would trust Bobby Fischer and Gary Kasparov to provide the most valuable commentary. If they say it's great, I'm more likely to read it. But if there's an article about Jewish business owners, I don't want to see Bobby Fischer's opinion. If there's an article about the government providing welfare and social services, I don't want to see Kasparov's opinion. How is this not a thing for science, technology, news...? "This technology article should scare you!" If I see that from Linus Torvalds, it's going to get my attention. From John McAfee? Not so much. "Nvidia's latest drivers are terrible." If that's from AnimeFan2004, I don't care. If it's from John Carmack, holy crap does it deserve my attention. More importantly, if John Carmack trusts someone about computer graphics, I'll probably trust them, too. If they trust someone else about computer graphics, there's a good chance I will, too. We've gotten used to seeking out the opinion of Rotten Tomatoes, or the old Siskel and Ebert thumb-based-metric... It's a shame we don't have a browser extension that brings those metrics to everything we see on the web. I'm watching the trailer for the new Marvel Civil War movie... and I see a Pop-Up-Video style bubble informing me that Kevin Smith really liked it. I'm reading an article about how Facebook is bringing internet, but not really internet, to India, and I see EFF crapping all over it. Right there - right on that same web page, because my browser extension brings that content in for me. I'm reading an arxiv about gene transfer in plants, and I see experts in the field saying they question the methodology. It just sucks to me that we don't have a PageRank for authority on topics... And we don't have a way to show those scores and opinions, THAT WE TRUST, stuck to the content. For instance, I trust Al Gore on Climate Change. Other people probably trust Donald Trump on Climate Change. It needs to be per-user to determine their authority-trust links. Or helping determine our news feed. (To finally relate my comments back to the topic at hand.)