Hi all from extremely (and fatally) hot Hyderabad, India... 1037 dead so far in this town alone. Anywhere else and this would be an international tragedy, here it barely makes the papers.
Beta-stable: In the words of Mr Horse (from Ren and Stimpy) "No Sir, I don't like it". One of LMS's early ideas was that when an article looked good enough it would get moved to Nupedia. Problem with that was that no-one ever actually went to Nupedia.
The same will happen here, if we create a Wikipedia that is static (can't be edited) then no-one will go there. Even the people who are truly only here to browse will gravitate to the dynamic site, simply because it is possible that that site "is more current".
To prove this I'd recommend creating a one-off Static version, putting a link to it from the dynamic site and then monitoring web-traffic over a period of 2- 3 months. Even after the site has been around for a while I'd be willing to wager it would still be a very lonely place.
If I am wrong, and the site does get a lot of traffic, well then we should spend the time and develop a proper management and quality control system. But until we have proved its viability, we would just be wasting effort - effort better spent on creating/editing articles.
Cheers Manning (Back in civilisation around June 20)
*Doomsayers have successfully forecasted 35 of the last 2 problems in Wikipedia's history*