[WikiEN-l] purpose served by anonymity / unmoderated

[Sheldon Rampton]

Steve Bennett wrote:

> Yeah. Which is also bad: "Welcome to Wikipendium, the encyclopaedia
> that's being edited in real-time. This article is 92 days out of
> date." Not as bad as Britannica. Not as good as Wikipedia.

I think there's a way to have most of the Citizendium advantages on  
Wikipedia without losing Wikipedia's advantages.

Wikipedia's advantages are: more inclusive; more editors; articles  
updated more frequently.

Citizendium's advantage is: expert vetting by people with actual  
credentials. (And yes, credentials DO mean something.) A problem,  
though, is that even experts don't always agree, and some people  
value different sorts of expertise.

One way to have the best of both worlds would be to have a public  
version of Wikipedia's watchlists feature, with a couple of  
modifications. Since this feature doesn't currently exist, I'll call  
it "approval lists" for lack of a better name.

Each user would be able create and maintain his/her own "approval  
list," which would work just like watchlists, except for the  
following two changes:

(1) A user's "approval list" would be publicly viewable by everyone,  
not just the user who creates it.

(2) Rather than marking an ARTICLE for inclusion in the approval  
list, users would mark a REVISION VERSION of the article.

This information would then be usable in various ways. For example,  
if user A and B are having an edit dispute, they might prefer to  
simply put different versions on their approval lists rather than  
having a revert war. If other users chime in, the effect would be  
akin to voting on a preferred version between the two. If user A's  
version gets marked for approval by 200 users while user B's version  
gets marked by only 10 users, this would provide evidence that A's  
version is more widely accepted.

Also, the issue of "credentials" could be dealt with by having users  
who possess credentials "bless" versions of articles that meet their  
standards. This would not prevent subsequent editing, but it would  
make it easy to find the latest version that has been vetted and  
approved by someone with credentials relevant to the topic.  
"Credentials" would not have to be defined or standardized. They  
might include "I have a Ph.D in physics" (a credential that I  
personally respect) or "I represent the John Birch Society" (a  
credential that I don't). The result would be that people could  
choose which credentials they personally value and find versions of  
the article that match their values.

If this functionality existed, I assume that most users would  
continue to rely primarily on the latest version of article. They  
would simply find it easier to meaningfully navigate the version  
history.

--------------------------------
|  Sheldon Rampton
|  Research director, Center for Media & Democracy (www.prwatch.org)
|  Author of books including:
|     Friends In Deed: The Story of US-Nicaragua Sister Cities
|     Toxic Sludge Is Good For You
|     Mad Cow USA
|     Trust Us, We're Experts
|     Weapons of Mass Deception
|     Banana Republicans
|     The Best War Ever
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