Fastfission wrote:
The sifter seems like an attempt to put on a veneer of
authority -- to
say, "this has been checked, it is more accurate or reliable than the
dynamic version." I think this is misleading and dangerous.
Personally, all I really want out of a sifter-type process is "this has
been checked and is not blatantly vandalized or currently an active
battleground, and the spelling looks okay to me." IMO a sifter like this
would take a lot of stress off of editors who, rightly or wrongly, feel
the need to keep a constant watch over articles and "fix" them instantly
when problems crop up. It would also allow us to feel comfortable
stamping ten thousand CDs without the fear that the database dump was
taken at the exact moment a vandal stuck in something dreadful that is
now immortalized in dimpled aluminium. All the standard Wikipedia
disclaimers should still apply.
Once we have that, then maybe we can start looking at ways to produce an
even more rigorously proofed versions that includes fact checking. I'm
not in a hurry. :)