How would people feel about a "Submit review" tab that is only shown to unregistered users, and that would result in a page showing
a) A brief excerpt (~1000 characters) of the article from which the user clicked "Submit review", and a link to open the whole article in a separate window
b) A note that we encourage people to directly correct errors, with further links on how to get started
c) A form with the following elements
Reviewer's name Reviewer's e-mail address Reviewer's professional background / affiliation (if any) Review text [ ] You agree that text of your review may be quoted, copied and otherwise used under the terms of the GNU FDL
The reviews would be sent to a to-be-created mailing list, e.g. reviews-l@wikipedia.org. Besides the form information, the messages would include an exact revision ID of the article that was being reviewed.
Might such a strategy be a way to bridge the gap between experts and the larger wiki world? One reason why experts may not want to participate directly is that they simply do not want to waste their time arguing with Wikipedians about what is right and wrong -- instead, they feel that their expertise should carry some weight. We could even put out a press release: "Wikipedia solicits experts reviews."
With a mailing list, volunteers could look at each submission, and act upon the ones which are legitimate (perhaps posting excerpts to the talk page etc.). At the same time, such a system would not undermine the regular community processes. It would also be easier to use than talk pages, and encourage providing credentials.
Another advantage of such a solution is that it's almost trivial to code -- in fact Angela wrote a "Contact us" extension that could be used as a basis for such a form.
To prevent spam and abuse, e-mail confirmation could be required before a review is processed. But perhaps it should be tried first without that.
Thoughts?
Erik