On Tue, 15 Feb 2005 03:59:39 -0000 (GMT), Tony Sidaway minorityreport@bluebottle.com wrote:
Skyring said:
"Here is Wikipedia's article on Our Lord, Jesus Christ," the Reverend Hardmind might say, opening up the article and showing that the Messiah is bending over to receive the divine blessing of twelve disciples, their robes around their ankles and their smiles around their ears.
Never mind that the image was inserted only minutes previously. The damage has been done.
That will happen and it's only a matter of time. Okay, I know this sounds like Chicken Licken, but I think it's inevitable. If schools and parents like Wikipedia's content we should provide it, but not in raw Wiki form. Then when the good reverend fulminates against Wikipedia's editing engine we can just turn around and say that's just the workfloor, not the version schoolkids see. We come clean, we admit that a full-blown Wiki is not a suitable environment for teaching and it's no place to leave your kids unattended. It should be possible to scan Wikipedia for about 5000 articles that would be useful to K12, choose a reasonably stable version and check it for suitability. Remove sections if necessary. Then store that in a MediaWiki running with editing turned off and you have the start of a school Wikipedia. We could rely on the pride of individual editors to perform the task of reviewing and copy-editing their own copies of candidate articles in userspace and submitting for the school wiki. Use an appointed standards committee of trusted editors to vet the content.
Do I detect a certain amount of tongue in cheek above?
I was thinking along the lines of a "printed" Wikipedia and a "working" Wikipedia. The "printed" version could be what you describe above, perhaps under a different name of Brikipedia or Slikipedia or Chikipedia.org, and it could be printed on demand or distributed on CD or made available on the web, the selling point being that it is accurate, uptodate and free of nasty surprises such as lewd images or vandalised articles. Possibly the lewd images could be available if you jump through a few hoops, click on a warning notice and provide a credit card merely for verification purposes. <g> Meanwhile the Wikipedia we know and love keeps on churning away in all its glory producing an uptotheminute and occasionally shocking encyclopaedia with all the merriment and mayhem of edit wars, debates over clitoral images and so on.