In a message dated 9/13/2009 2:14:35 PM Pacific Daylight Time, bluecaliocean@me.com writes:
The "letter" of releasing Mediawiki to the public mean anyone can use it for any purpose, but the "spirit" dictates that if you don't intend to have people edit it in a "Wikipedia-style" fashion (ie We assume good faith here, so you start out with these editing privileges), then you need to go elsewhere.>>
I dont' agree with this feeling unless you mean "people" in a loose way. I don't want *anyone* to edit my own wiki. I encourage people to do so, but I will also block certain articles to signed-in users only, or block others to myself only.
I think that's my right as owner of my own wiki.
I would even encourage people who simply want to use the wiki to do simple mark-up. I mean want easier way to migrate into full HTML than using Mediawiki? What are the alternatives? I haven't seen one that makes it quite so easy.
I would however like a per-article option to *not save revisions*. Some articles just don't benefit from revision history.
Will Johnson
Two perspectives on a "WikiJournal": should we compete in something not our core, and where others may do better? Or should we go ahead anyway?
If we did try, then a WikiJournal would be a classic case where we could do the job right using present tools, and achieve something that most similar sites won't do. Try this:
- Anyone can post up a paper, in usual academic form (ie authors info would be required, formal citations, and so on). - The draft is held back using Flagged Revisions, similar to Wikinews' configuration, at the point of writing. - Other users then discuss and critique and identify as a peer review process, issues to be addressed (NPOV would probably fail as a criteria since many good papers are written from the view of one specific author or team; we'd need some more suitable criterion here). - When the issues are mostly addressed, a poll (community or some kind of "trusted users") takes place to decide whether it passes the peer review it's had. - If it does, it's posted up as a "beta" version - a paper that is believed to meet the appropriate standard and has passed WikiJournal peer review, and is promotedon a list of such papers. - After a month, a second poll takes place, much shorter, to ask if the community still ratifies the paper in light of feedback from the public. if so, it's accepted as a paper. - Papers are reviewed annually, or upon major new information, so they become a living document -- the paper on the higgs boson as it is now, and the same paper as it was a year, 2 years ago, showing the advance of knowledge and correcting itself as time passes and knowledge develops.
FT2
FT2 wrote:
If we did try, then a WikiJournal would be a classic case where we could do the job right using present tools, and achieve something that most similar sites won't do. Try this:
- Anyone can post up a paper, in usual academic form (ie authors info
would be required, formal citations, and so on).
- The draft is held back using Flagged Revisions, similar to Wikinews'
configuration, at the point of writing.
- Other users then discuss and critique and identify as a peer review
process, issues to be addressed (NPOV would probably fail as a criteria since many good papers are written from the view of one specific author or team; we'd need some more suitable criterion here).
Considering that competent refereeing is the practical bottleneck for a peer-review-led system: perhaps the point can be sharpened. If wiki-style collaborative refereeing is something that will work, then this concept is plausible and the WMF should at least take an interest. If not - if backlogs and pickiness will predominate over sensible closures of a revision - then the idea is worth relatively less.
Charles