Magnus Manske wrote:
- this can be gamed (mark it as a minor edit, or write "google" under
sources, or give some non-existing or out-of print book, or a book in an obscure language, or set up your own fake page and then give it as source, or...)
What's wrong with using an out-of-print book as a source? It might be the only source for this 18-people remote saami village in the Kiruna municipality of Lapland?
As Brion already stated correctly, the current Wikipedia is an eternal beta version. Validation (how's that coming, BTW?;-) will eventually give some hints to the "end user", but it probably would not have caught the JFK blunder either.
Parts look more like alpha than like beta to me.
That directly leads to a (relatively) small, elite (!=cabal) group of peer reviewers. The cathedral filtering the bazaar, as I said before. This could be done externally (software's in the making), or within wikipedia. The latter would be nicer, however, it might lead to more conflict between those who can peer review and those who can not.
A problem with a bazaar is that the products sold might not conform to the norms that current society holds.
Gerrit.