--- Ulrich Fuchs mail@ulrich-fuchs.de wrote:

A validation process can operate in two ways: either there is some was of a democratic voting sytem, which will lead to mediocre article (science is not democratic). Or there are some people which are more trusted than others - and that's the capitulation of the wiki principle.

Our problems is not validation. Our problem is that the goals are not clear (what goes in, or perhaps: what goes in in which edition), and that editing (which means: deleting a lot of things) is considered bad habit.

Uli

Nod. But we could give different goals to products. For example, the goal of wikireaders could be from now on be much more defined.

It is already a different goal that wikipedia * it offers limited information (it is an extract of wikipedia) * it tries to cover quite generally a whole topic (eg, a wikireader on a country will covers its geography, politics, economics, tourism etc...) * it is meant to be read only (errors can't be fixed).

* it is meant to be sold (while wikipedia is free)

We could add to these different goals the fact the information in it has been double checked, that it undergone an *organised* peer-review (rather than a quite anarchic one like on wikipedia).

no ?

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Daniel Mayer maveric149@yahoo.com wrote: --- Anthere wrote:

Nod. But we could give different goals to products. For example, the goal of wikireaders could be from now on be much more defined.

It is already a different goal that wikipedia

• it offers limited information (it is an extract of

wikipedia)

• it tries to cover quite generally a whole topic (eg,

a wikireader on a country will covers its geography, politics, economics, tourism etc...)

• it is meant to be read only (errors can't be fixed).

• it is meant to be sold (while wikipedia is free)

We could add to these different goals the fact the information in it has been double checked, that it undergone an *organised* peer-review (rather than a quite anarchic one like on wikipedia).

I agree with all of this and would like to add that the WikiReader idea could eventually be expanded to cover entire limited subject/focus encyclopedias (such as concise, science, biography, war, geography, ... etc.). Good categorization could be used to help select which articles to go into these various WikiReader encyclopedias and the concise version could use the lead sections from a much larger set of articles. All selected articles would then have to go through some kind of approval process and fixed as needed or discarded from the list (all edits would still be on Wikipedia).

---------------

Yes. This is why I suggested in the category discussion on the wikien-l, that people start to team together around one topic. A team work (rather a loose association as right now) could develop around specific topics (just as it is done from time to time on wikiprojects).

These teams could at the same time work together * to define proper categorizing of the topic * try to define which essentials articles are still missing for the topic to be roughtly covered * work together toward filling the main gaps * once the team agree that the topic is generally well covered, decide which articles could perhaps constitute the frame of a wikireader (or any type of material which could be distributed, less pages, more pages, specific goal, specific audience...) * organise a team peer review of all articles selected to belong the distribution material

For this, I wonder if it might not been best that each team develops with the help of one organiser, someone strongly trusted for his/her knowledge of the topic, and his/her cooperative and organising abilities.

Distribution of the whole encyclopedia is an interesting goal, but I guess it will be tough. Probably is it best to go step by step, and have groups focus on isolated topic. Through this, we will have the opportunity to test our ability to cover properly *some* areas, review them fully for accuracy and completeness, then define production and distribution procedure.

Ant

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Ulrich Fuchs wrote:

If we all would agree that we are working on an encyclopaedia, not an everything-goes-in-wiki, not a website,

This doesn't make any sense to me. The whole point of an encyclopaedia is that everything goes in it. That's the meaning of the work "encyclopaedia". The (unfortunately common) phrase "This topic is unencylopedic." is nonsensical.

Of course, "everything" is a vague term that requires a context. So a general encyclopaedia rightfully covers every ''subject'', but this doesn't mean that it should include personal homepages, or commercial advertisements, or other "things" of that nature. However, I believe that we all agree on that much.

if we would all agree that it's needed to delete poorly researched content and articles on silly subjects (like "the xyz drum produced by company A") while there aren't articles on the main subject ("Drumming"), then we wouldn't need to talk about those "validation" concepts, because the validation would happen all the time - the wiki principle would do.

I can't imagine how the existence of the article [[Drumming]] would make an article on a particular brand of drum more or less appropriate (especially considering that the more relevant [[Drum]] is quite old). Certainly, an article on drumming is more ''important'' to have than an article on any particlar kind (brand, or other division) of drum. But we're not paying our contributors to write the most important articles; beggars can't be choosers, and they write about what they want to write about. (That said, we already have an article on drumming: [[Drum]].)

This is rather specific discussion that we probably don't need to carry further on the general foundation mailing list. But it shows why we're not all going to agree with you about everything.

A validation process can operate in two ways: either there is some was of a democratic voting sytem, which will lead to mediocre article (science is not democratic). Or there are some people which are more trusted than others - and that's the capitulation of the wiki principle.

I agree, which is why Wikipedia as such doesn't need validation. Anybody that produces an abbreviated selection of Wikipedia (whether the Wikimedia Foundation does it or somebody else does it) will need some criteria of inclusion. Peer review, or some other kind of validation, may be reasonable. But Wikipedia itself -- the big wiki at <wikipedia.org> -- does not need this, I agree.

Even the current deletion method is a partial capitulation of the wiki principle. Does anybody else remember Wikipedia's first deletion policy, when only Jimbo, Larry Sanger, and Tim Shell were allowed to delete? And Manning Bartlett (hardly a radical inclusionist) wrote:

...>I do not want to see this list of "deleters" expanded.

How much we have changed! ^_^

Our problems is not validation. Our problem is that the goals are not clear (what goes in, or perhaps: what goes in in which edition), and that editing (which means: deleting a lot of things) is considered bad habit.

BTW, are we talking about Wikimedia in general here, or only Wikipedia?

-- Toby