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(a)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