Hi everyone -
It was great joining you all for the Wikipedia meetup on Sunday. We
had quite a few debates, most of which were about
intellectual property issues. At Wikipedia Day last January, I
discussed the fact that debates over Wikipedia policies tend to get
very complex, long, and convoluted on discuss wikis. I'd like to
suggest (as an experiment) using the ideagraph system, which I
presented last Jan, to discuss a
few of the most complicated/controversial Wikipedia-related issues
that haven't yet garnered a consensus.
For example...
"Citing sources on the English Wikipedia should be optional in cases
where obtaining sources is difficult"
http://ideagra.ph/1755
...this is something we discussed on Sunday with regard to scientific
issues that are difficult to source.
The UI has been completely redesigned since last Jan - it now
resembles the look of a traditional Wikipedia discuss page with
indented refutations, etc. What makes this different from a Wikipedia
discuss page? Statements have a color (green/red) which represents
their current state of consensus (something that's been refuted, for
instance, is red). You can also re-use facts concluded in other
debates by other people - thus allowing the work of debating/reasoning
to be distributed among (potentially) billions of people.
The Ideagraph is a non-profit project based on the open principles of
Wikipedia (see the about page at the bottom). It was specifically
designed to fix the current problems with Wikipedia's discuss pages.
Hope you like it. Thanks!
-Peter