I'm omitting responses to issues that are addressed by Magnus' post...
On Thu, 13 Sep 2001, Tim Chambers wrote:
- Wikipedia also strives to be academically relevant by enabling
periodic releases of encyclopedia versions. The period may be much shorter than a conventional encyclopedia, but most information providers seem to be settling on annual updates. This also builds on the strong tradition of hardcopy almanac?s. The 2001 edition of the Wikipedia needs to get out soon if we go this route.
This would be a *great* benefit of having an "approved" namespace. If we make the standard for inclusion in the "approved" namespace roughly equivalent to the standard for inclusion in Nupedia, we essentially guarantee that the articles will be of publishable quality. It's fantastic that Wikipedia is so easy to edit, too, because it means that any issues that reviewers might have can be *immediately* rectified (by the reviewers themselves). This might be a way to get a lot of the (thousands!) of idle Nupedia hands involved in Wikipedia.
Anyway, yes, it would be fantastic to have an approved body of content to be able to release in cheap newsprint editions, for places that lack computers, and in CD versions. As soon as we get enough approved content, you can bet that Jimbo will be very interested in producing such materials.
- Wikipedia articles can be versioned even more often than the whole
Wikipedia. We already do this thanks to UseModWiki, but the calls for "freezing" articles are begging for a baselining system where an article can, to some degree, be called "ready." They'll never be "finished," but many are "ready" for "release."
I agree 100%. (Actually, I think even our very best articles might be subject to some further revision by expert reviewers.)
Here's a start to get discussion of Wikipedia's configuration management system going. Current URLs at www.wikipedia.com would continue to reflect the current understanding of the "wild and wooly world." Articles are "live." But some new links can be added to each article. Every "released" article could have a link to view diffs compared with older released versions of the article, not just the "older revisions." We still show visitors the live copy, but we have a link to "release 2001" or release "September 2001" and so on. These named releases are frozen for all time. So the world will know what Wikipedia in 2001 had to say about the universe. There isn't an "edit" link on released pages, but there's a "visit the live, ongoing work-in-progress version of this article," which still has the edit link.
Sounds reasonable.
Larry