[Wikipedia-l] Re: [Wikitech-l] Feature Proposal: Certification

[Toby Bartels]

[Note:  The post that I'm replying to didn't appear on <wikipedia-l>.
        Thus I copy it all, except for the technical aspects.]

Erik Moeller wrote:

>One key problem with a wiki encyclopaedia is that there's no quality
>control whatsoever. An article may have been vandalized 5 seconds ago,
>or be grossly non-NPOV etc. As we get more and more articles, this
>problem becomes more urgent.

>Fortunately, the solution is rather simple. Articles can be certified by
>contributors to be high quality. But who is allowed to certify articles?
>The system works by allowing groups of people to form certification
>teams. Anyone can submit a new team to be created, and anyone can apply
>to join an existing team and certify articles in its name. Users can
>then decide to view only article revisions certified by members of
>selected teams.

>So I could decide in my user preferences:
>	Certification: Approved Teams
>		Team Nupedia
>		Team Wiki-Fiction
>		Team Wiki-Maths

>Then there would have to be a way to display certified article
>revisions. This could be accomplished by having a "Certified Mode",
>showing *only* articles that have received certs, with the most recently
>certified revision shown. Somewhat weaker, where an article has been
>certified, a link "There is a version of this article certified by Team
>X" could be placed above the article, showing the certified revision
>when clicked (or a text "This article has been certified by .." if the
>current revision is the certified one). This could be the default view,
>making users aware of the cert system.

>Each team could have its own quality standards, policies, and subject
>preferences. I suggest that the creation of new teams would have to be
>approved by the Wikipedia cabal to avoid "Team Trolls". New team members
>would either be voted on or approved by team members that have a certain
>status flag ("can_approve_newcomers"). Teams could get their own
>namespace as well.

You seem to be using the word "cabal" here in a sense that
is neither derogatory nor ironic.  I find that highly disturbing.

>A decision would have to be made as to which teams to include in the
>default view, i.e. the one that anonymous and newly registered users
>get. In the short term such decisions may be made by the cabal, in the
>long term I would prefer voting.

If newcomers see only what is approved by a list of certification teams,
then Wikipedia will no longer be a wiki.  There will be a wiki underneath,
which you can get to by registering and then setting your preferences,
but that wiki would be dead without an influx of newcomers.

[technical aspects cut]

>Results:
>--------
>If this works as intended, it should solve the quality problem and allow
>users to browse Wikipedia as a high quality content only encyclopaedia.
>The more teams you would admit to your personal filter, the more content
>you would see, but quality standards of individual teams might not be up
>to par. By distributing the job of quality approval on several team
>leaders, we can get competition of quality standards and social methods,
>which is probably a good thing and reduces social problems.

>Potential problems:
>-------------------
>If too many people use highly customized views, caching will get harder.
>I don't see this as too big a problem as a) most people typically don't
>customize views, b) article retrieval is already very fast with or
>without caching.

>Too many teams may have undesired effects, such as teams deliberately
>inserting POV articles to certify them. This is not a problem with the
>team principle per se but with the way teams are approved and moderated.
>Generally, teams should have a clear NPOV commitment and respect
>Wikipedia policy, otherwise they should be deleted.

>Comments on this would be appreciated. This is something I probably
>won't have time to implement fully, but I will gladly help with any/all
>efforts. I consider it very necessary for Wikipedia in the long term.


-- Toby