Steve Bennett wrote: I think there's a way to have most of the Citizendium advantages on Wikipedia without losing Wikipedia's advantages. Wikipedia's advantages are: more inclusive; more editors; articles updated more frequently. Citizendium's advantage is: expert vetting by people with actual credentials. (And yes, credentials DO mean something.) A problem, though, is that even experts don't always agree, and some people value different sorts of expertise. One way to have the best of both worlds would be to have a public version of Wikipedia's watchlists feature, with a couple of modifications. Since this feature doesn't currently exist, I'll call it "approval lists" for lack of a better name. Each user would be able create and maintain his/her own "approval list," which would work just like watchlists, except for the following two changes: (1) A user's "approval list" would be publicly viewable by everyone, not just the user who creates it. (2) Rather than marking an ARTICLE for inclusion in the approval list, users would mark a REVISION VERSION of the article. This information would then be usable in various ways. For example, if user A and B are having an edit dispute, they might prefer to simply put different versions on their approval lists rather than having a revert war. If other users chime in, the effect would be akin to voting on a preferred version between the two. If user A's version gets marked for approval by 200 users while user B's version gets marked by only 10 users, this would provide evidence that A's version is more widely accepted. Also, the issue of "credentials" could be dealt with by having users who possess credentials "bless" versions of articles that meet their standards. This would not prevent subsequent editing, but it would make it easy to find the latest version that has been vetted and approved by someone with credentials relevant to the topic. "Credentials" would not have to be defined or standardized. They might include "I have a Ph.D in physics" (a credential that I personally respect) or "I represent the John Birch Society" (a credential that I don't). The result would be that people could choose which credentials they personally value and find versions of the article that match their values. If this functionality existed, I assume that most users would continue to rely primarily on the latest version of article. They would simply find it easier to meaningfully navigate the version history. -------------------------------- | Sheldon Rampton | Research director, Center for Media & Democracy (www.prwatch.org) | Author of books including: | Friends In Deed: The Story of US-Nicaragua Sister Cities | Toxic Sludge Is Good For You | Mad Cow USA | Trust Us, We're Experts | Weapons of Mass Deception | Banana Republicans | The Best War Ever -------------------------------- | Subscribe to our free weekly list serve by visiting: | http://www.prwatch.org/cmd/subscribe_sotd.html | | Donate now to support independent, public interest reporting: | https://secure.groundspring.org/dn/index.php?id=1118 --------------------------------