On Saturday, December 20, 2003, at 09:12 AM, Jimmy Wales wrote:
Peter Jaros wrote:
OK, let's make this quick: What we need is a non-editable subset of wikipedia, correct?
Hold up. Do we? Is this to be a paper or electronic encyclopedia? Or both? Or am I talking about two different proposals? It seems a shame to me to freeze and de-wikify entries if not for the sole purpose of inscribing it on a medium that can't be edited (ie., paper). I would much prefer a tagging system which allows us to mark entries as complete. Note that 'complete' is not the same as 'finished'. No entry should ever be finished. But some entries have achieved completion, where the need only adjustment; think opposite of stub. Furthermore, these entries rarely devolve from their complete status, though if they did for some reason the tag could be quickly removed (or, preferably, the entry re-completed :) ).
- instead, "tagging" particular versions as "good enough" is what we
want. I like the "good enough" terminology rather than either "complete" or "finished". Basically a "good enough" article is one which someone could print on paper and distribute in a bookstore without feeling too stupid.
I like the term 'good enough'. It's definitely better than my 'complete' (why I basically tried to redefine 'slightly' to become it's own antonym) and I like its connotations better than those of 'sufficient'. 'Good enough' is reminiscent of 'zarro boogs'.
Imagine this scenario -- a publisher says to the Wikimedia Foundation, "We are prepared to distribute your encyclopedia worldwide in bookstores for 1/10th the price of a new Britannica, and pay royalties to the foundation to pay for new servers and whatnot, all you have to do is send us a complete extract of articles that are good enough."
We'd like to be able to do that, without having to laboriously go over the database _one last time_, because we'd like to already have flagged some 60,000-100,000 "good enough" articles.
Exactly
Let's say an article is flagged "good enough". Then it gets edited. That edit should, in some cases, not automatically result in the new version also being tagged "good enough", because it might be an act of vandalism that takes place just moments before I run the 'extract' command to send the files to the printer.
This is a sticky point. I'm divided between your point above and this question: If any edit removes the tag to protect against vandalism, will we ever have enough articles tagged? Also, who is tagging the articles? Can't a vandal tag? Or is it safe enough to limit it to registered users?
Peter
--- Funding for this program comes from Borders without Doctors: The Bookstore Chain That Sounds Like a Charity. --Harry Shearer, Le Show