Kai Kumpf wrote:
i know this topic keeps reoccuring and so my point may
not be very
original.
it has been said that wikipedia is "work in progress" and will
probably continue to to so. on the other hand it ails from the fact
that at no given point in time you can be certain to have a 1.
consistent , 2. unvandalized and 3. correct throughout wikipedia.
(compared to those three points the shortcoming of non-completeness
dwindles to almost nothing.)
let me draw your attention to the fact that the construction plans for
roads to stability - or at least local optima - have long been laid
out by physics. heat a dynamic system quickly then let it cool down in
a slower and controlled fashion, allowing less and less dramatic
changes to take place as time passes. simulated annealing
(
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulated_annealing) is the magic spell
that might work for wikixyzs in a way similar to that in the real world.
the rationale behind my suggestion is of course that articles that
have matured over time are statistically speaking less likely to
improve when large modifications are made than relatively new ones.
some of the articles have reached a stage where well-meant editing
effectively mucks up the inner structure and logic. what i think
reasonable is to lift the threshold for substantial edits, maybe not
by limiting access but by asking for more substantial background
information from the authors (references, printed, electronic,...)
than the simple comment line. there is to much unproven and partially
unprovable information in the wp. that could have been prevented long
ago by obliging the authors to give references for their information.
besides, this task would make it successively harder to simply put
established statements upside down. whereas scientific journals have
peer review, wp only offers the weak weapons of discussion pages and
reverts - by others, mostly admins, i guess. why not confer a little
bit more of responsibility to the authors? he/she could be aided by
predefined lists, checkboxes, comboboxes (for ref. type, etc.)
i find myself increasingly involved in hunting down vandals and their
work - partly due to the ease of use wp offers for non-serious edits,
too, and i can't help feeling that a larger and larger part of wp
keeps a larger and larger part of the community busy with just keeping
up the existing standard.
comments?
best
kai (kku)
I agree with Kai on this completely; if Wikipedia is about optimization
by repeated random/evolutionary/whatever change, simulated annealing is
_the_ classic way to achieve stable results.
Once an article had been progressively and slowly "cooled" to a low
enough "temperature", it would be effectively frozen. If an article was
shown to be seriously wrong, or needed extensive revision, it could
always be "warmed up" again, either partially or all they way. The old
"cooled" version of the article could be marked in the history as the
"previous stable version".
In any case, as stable articles cooled down, they would change less and
less often, making the use of the article rating process (where ratings
must necessarily refer only to a single version) more and more useful.
Question: what would should a good algorithm for "cooling" and
"heating"
pages be based on? Article ratings for the last few versions? Consensus
in an "articles for cooling" page? Intervention by admins?
Perhaps even some simple automatic heuristic like (for example) _very_
slowly cooling pages that are read repeatedly by a wide range of readers
over some significant time period and yet not edited (ie, implicitly
"validated" in a tiny way by those readers) during that time? Perhaps
articles should slowly "heat up" if not read for some time?
-- Neil