Something like the plan in [[User:David Gerard/1.0]]
would use an article
rating system (picture a "Rate this page" tab at the top next to
"Article",
"Edit", etc.) to get a rough idea of what is of decent quality to pull for
a distribution.
I assume you're talking about rating per article, and not per revision (as
the latter would be fairly impossible). In that case, it'd be quite a rough
idea indeed.
Personally I think we should just use something like featured article status
for our rating system. At the point where the article becomes "featured"
(or whatever we decide to call it), that's where we'd make our branch.
Obviously we'd have to tweak the featured article process to be more closely
aligned with a print version (featured articles shouldn't have non-free
images in them), but something similar to the featured article process would
work much better than article ratings, in my opinion.
Any branching and polishing would be left as late as
possible. Think of the Mozilla process, where the alpha, beta and final are
branched from the nightlies, slightly polished for a few days (or weeks)
and then released. This would provide minimal disruption of and diversion
of resources from the live Wikipedia.
If the Mozilla process does this, then presumably its programmers are not
supposed to introduce brand new features during the alpha and beta stages of
development. I find that rather hard to believe, but maybe Mozilla is a
small enough project that it can do such a thing.
Wikipedia isn't. In fact, Wikipedia is still growing exponentially. New
information is being added faster than it can be fact checked and proofread.
The only way I can see avoiding a fork and coming out with a respectible
encyclopedia would be to freeze all new development for a really long time,
and that is obviously unacceptable.
Again, I don't know much about Mozilla development, but any major
development project on the order of something like Wikipedia is going to
have branches off the main trunk which are maintained for long periods of
time. This causes some wasted time since things need to be merged and
backported, but it's the fastest and most efficient way to produce a high
quality product. I'm afraid that "slightly polished for a few days (or
weeks)" isn't going to cut it.
Diversion of resources isn't such a big problem as long as the branch is
maintained properly. New information goes into the main trunk. "Bug fixes"
(typos, inaccuracies, small wording changes, POV removal) are implemented in
the branch, and merged into the main trunk if applicable. Really important
new information (the twin towers are destroyed, the leader of a world
superpower is assassinated, etc.) might get backported, i.e. added into the
main trunk and then merged into the the branch; but this should be the
exception, not the rule, and should only be done while the branch is still
active.
Of course, maybe our only disagreement here is over how long it's going to
take to get from the point of the fork to the point where the branch is no
longer maintained. In my opinion a few weeks isn't going to be anywhere
near enough time to fix all the inaccuracies.
- d.
Anthony
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