On 11/30/05, Katefan0 katefan0@yahoo.com wrote:
I hesitated to post this message because I don't want to take credit for the idea. It was actually an idea put forth by Johntex, relayed to me after the recent meetup he'd gone to. I'm not sure that he subscribes to wikien-l, though, so I thought I'd mention it FWIW. I believe he also relayed the idea to Jimbo so perhaps this has already been circulated.
Johntex's idea is essentially a spinoff of an "approved" version. He essentially proposed that Wikipedia create an additional "tab" people could click on to see the last "approved" version. Everybody can still edit the non-approved version, just as normal. And I guess, taking the idea out to its logical extreme, at intervals the two versiosn would be compared and any new information meshed into the "approved" version. This way everybody can still edit and contribute, but anyone concerned about ensuring the version they're looking at has been vetted thoroughly could simply click on the "approved" tab.
Kate, it's very similar to this:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Article_marker_feature
And it seems like it's the least disruptive, highest ROI feature that we could try, and the implementation would be simple.
-Andrew (User:Fuzheado)