We present: The web of trust

On the betterlace.org project pages you can read the following text concerning their trustworthiness: „We suggest that you support projects, when you know the carrier organisation or the project responsible, or if a trustworthy person recommended the project to you - or if the web of trust convinced you of the project’s trustworthiness.“ Now, what is the exact meaning of „ web of trust “?

The Web of trust is meant to give the page visitor an overview over the project and gives an answer to the following questions: shall I trust the project? Shall I donate to the project? We from betterplace.org think that beside the important role of the project carrier and the project-carrying organisation, notably the people who already donated are warrantors for the trustworthiness of the project. Therefore we created a new tab called „ donors and opinions “ on the new project pages.

There you will find all the people, which already donated to the project. Next to their entry, a little Euro icon is shown. You will also find the positive or negative opinions of persons who expressed themselves about the project. Next to their name you will find the correspondent thumbs up or thumbs down icon. Finally on this page there are also the comments of users, which have been „on site“. Next to their report there is an icon with the words „on-site“. Out of this three group of people – donors, opinion givers and on-site visitors – interested parties can get a broader impression of the project. To filter the entries, simply click ‘Show on site-reports and opinions only’. Then you will see on the first look all the different opinions of people, which have been on-site, or just opinions of those who gave their general opinion about a project.

In addition to the described elements and the project description itself, the tab „ News “ is also an inherent part of the web of trust. There, the project carrier reports on all the current events around the project and also about how the donations are actually used.

And sometimes a picture can tell more than a thousand words and thus the project pictures can reveal a lot about the evolution of the project. When scrolling over the project photo with the mouse, there will be a little reference about the amount of other photos in the gallery. The gallery itself is to be opened by a simple click on the main project photo.

All this elements are part of the web of trust indicator on betterplace.org. Some organisations, which present a project on betterplace.org, extend this trust network, by putting some further information about themselves on their project pages. Like external distinctions, official seals or via a positive celebrity statements. Finally, it remains your own decision to figure out what you see as the most important factor inside the web of trust. We from betterplace.org can only give you a lot of different ways to inform yourself the best you can.

If now you feel like checking out a few projects, than have a look on our PROJECT OVERVIEW or find interesting projects on our MAP VIEW. If you log in to betterplace.org via Facebook, you will also be able to see who of your friends is part of the web of trust of a project. How this is working exactly, is explained here.