Lars Aronsson wrote:
Instead of thinking of (the English) Wikipedia as a
basket of
850,000 articles in their current version, we can think of it as a
basket of X million article-versions.
Every
article-version in this collection of X million is free under
GFDL, and can be used as the basis for new article-versions.
Anybody can add new article-versions to the collection.
Oh, I *like* that.
Currently Wikipedia works under the assumption that
the latest
version of any article is the best one, and the only one that
should be linked from other articles, shown to the public and
indexed by search engines. It is important that we realize that
this *is* an assumption, it does represent a design choice, and
not necessarily the optimal one.
If I'm compiling a Wikireader or a similar subset of articles, I
might pick my article-versions under very different assumptions.
I agree.
I'm surprised that Wikipedia mirrors such as
Answers.com don't
work more like Wikireaders, where a human editor picks useful
article-versions and leaves the stubs unmirrored. The added value
from such an "editor's choice" would be a perfectly valid business
model.
Indeed!
- d.