Bryan Derksen wrote:
At 12:31 PM 7/16/2004 -0700, Ray Saintonge wrote:
Magnus Manske wrote:
Now, the rapid change of wikipedia articles unveils this problem:
- Does the second approval need to be for the *same version* as the
first, or can it be for a later one, which then gets the "seal of approval"?
It should be essentially for the same one, except for corrections of minor spelling errors or typos.
Users who approve a version of an article would likely watchlist it, so it doesn't seem like a major imposition to require them to review newer edits and give approval to newer versions if need be. Perhaps even have the software create a sort of parallel specialized watchlist that shows articles you've approved in the past that have had edits performed on them since then, both to make sure one doesn't forget to watchlist them and to make sure one's regular watchlist doesn't become cluttered.
Also, should there be
- yes/no approval(s)
- or rather a rating (0-9 or something)
The numerical rating has much merit. and an average rating can be generated as a composite of these.
Users should only have the yes/no option, IMO, since including or excluding an article is an all-or-nothing proposition. Combining multiple users' ratings into a more fine-grained number could be handy, though, showing whether the approval is controversial at a glance. The details of this rating system will no doubt be the subject of endless bickering, which I look forward to seeing the end result of. :)
I disagree. I believe that most users would prefer the ability to express shades of opinion. A numerical rating allows more information to be gathered; users who want to assert an all-or-nothing opinion can still vote 0 or 10. I would then suggest feeding the results to a robust estimator (using the median would be a good first hack) to prodice a fine-grained estimate. It would also be useful to have a robust spread measure to detect contentious articles.
By having a wide range of fine-grained estimates, and perhaps adding in factors for linkage, we can then prune the encyclopedia to any desired size by adjusting the threshold for inclusion.
-- Neil