On 6/19/07, phoebe ayers phoebe.wiki@gmail.com wrote:
The fact-check project is a noble endeavor, but hasn't really put any innovative structures for coordination forward that I am aware of. Something different is needed, that is less dependent on what any given editor might happen to have at hand (and that manages to work within copyright law and access restrictions -- perhaps a trickier problem).
Here's a hypothetical for the developers or anyone else familiar with MediaWiki: Could a program be created that would automatically go through an article's history and find who added a particular statement to an article? If so, could a semi-automatic bot be programmed that would find out who added statements with Citation Needed tags and with approval from whoever is watching the bot make a message on their talk page asking if they could add a citation? Human control means it wont waste its time asking thousands of ip users for sources, only registered users. This would require we put up with Citation Needed tags being routinely slathered all over articles, but would ultimately lead to higher average article quality.
-Chris Croy