Gerrit Holl wrote:
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?
Nothing's wrong with that. But if I were a subtle vandal and had to cite my sources, I might cite some out-of-print book, hoping noone will get a hold of a copy soon. Thus, using "cite your sources" to prevent subtle vandalism doesn't work.
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.
Considering Microsoft sells beta-stage software as "stable", the borders are kinda fluent there :-)
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.
It's not like the reviewers would come in from another reality. IMHO, many Wikipedians would qualify. The point is that there would be a higher standard of quality; people who import substandard articles would soon be excluded. The main rule would be along the lines "Import *only* if you *know* this article is good".
Magnus