Larry Sanger wrote:
On Thu, 18 Oct 2001, Mark Christensen wrote:
Magnus brings up an important point, which has to
do with how this
will interact with namespaces, and particularly the stable namespace.
I think we need to have some manual control over what goes into the
stable namespace, so that we can be sure that the people approving
[...]
http://www.wikipedia.com/wiki/Wikipedia_approval_mechanism
Many people have already made several good proposals and some surprisingly
:-) polite debate has been ongoing for some time now.
I was thinking here. What if you could name and address every version
of an article, e.g.
http://www.wikipedia.com/wiki/Radio would link to
the "current" or "latest" version of the article on Radio, but
http://www.wikipedia.com/wiki/Radio/12 would link to version 12 of
that article. Then somebody could "approve" version 12, or maybe have
copyright to version 23, and this would not stop anybody from
continuing to modify the article into version 34. You could create
"Nupedia 2.0" as a web of pointers to approved versions of Wikipedia
articles. The articles (and their versions) would be part of
Wikipedia, but the approval mechanisms would be part of Nupedia. Any
modification to a Wikipedia article would create a new version, and
not change the approved version.
By separating article storage from approval, you could also have
multiple approval webs. You could have Nupedia with high academic
standards, and PC-pedia with high demands on political correctness,
only linking to politically correct articles. Or a leftist-pedia web
that only links to article versions with non-capitalist views. Or a
parental-guidance-pedia that only links to articles with non-explicit
contents.
I think this sort of separation would do the least harm to wikipedia,
because people could continue to write wikipedia articles at the speed
of light without having to think too much about getting approval. The
approval could be a slower process without hampering the creativeness.
--
Lars Aronsson (lars(a)aronsson.se)
Aronsson Datateknik
Teknikringen 1e, SE-583 30 Linköping, Sweden
tel +46-70-7891609
http://aronsson.se