Sascha Noyes writes:
Lots of vandalism and copyright violations [and other unethical editing] sneak past the RecentChanges patrol.
Sure; the real issue is that RecentChanges is too overwhelming for effective peer review. I think it should be divided up so it might be conquered. I disagree with watchlists as they are perhaps too individualistic to encourage people to watch things they have not seen. Rather, you need RecentChanges to remain the Commons.
The most obvious way to split it is by subject focus. I recognize categorization is philosophically problematic, but I have what I think is a better idea called DigestedChanges. I apologize this is still in sketch form, but you might get the gist from
http://www.usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl?DigestedChanges
Essentially I propose making 'weblogs' of Wikipedia's changes. Each group might build its own group weblog if they wish, although that is simply better watchlists again, it may attract people to read collaborated digests if they are interested in a particular subject field. If that fails, you can restrict which and how many digests there are.
At least that would better organize the information so it is 'digestable'.
SS
Sunir Shah wrote
Sure; the real issue is that RecentChanges is too overwhelming for effective peer review. I think it should be divided up so it might be conquered. I disagree with watchlists as they are perhaps too individualistic to encourage people to watch things they have not seen. Rather, you need RecentChanges to remain the Commons.
The most obvious way to split it is by subject focus.
<snip>
I find myself not greatly in agreement with Sunir's description of a 'solution'; though what he says feels like the correct direction. I may exist as Wikipedian in some of the more placid parts; but I think the idea of topic lists+use of RelatedChanges is about as good as it will get *on average* across WP. That is, such sub-communities as come together to maintain lists and police changes to pages thus listed are going to be the best warranty for the content, over most of the Wikipedia. It's a kind of nucleation and aggregation process, and works mostly on the basis of keeping people who care coming back.
Charles