Tom Haws wrote:
David Geerard wrote:
Nah. A massively distributed rating system seems the only workable idea to me, because it will harness dilettantism. Editorial committees aren't the sort of thing that scales.
And I think a ratings system should be worth a try, on the assumption that most of the ratings will be good faith. 'Cos if we can't assume that, then we can't assume good faith for the project in general. And I think we can.
If their money can be directed that way, get them to hire a PHP developer for a while to get the rating feature polished up ;-)
Right, David. Don't think fork; think Add-on. And don't think editorial committee; think reputation/rating system. And always keep dilettantism at the front of your cogitations.
To those considering forking Wikipedia, I say why not simply start an add-on site where users can register, build reputation, and rate article versions. All their edits originating from the Add-on site (credipedia.org or respectipedia.org) go straight into the main Wikipedia database, and the add-on site sifts articles for presentation to anonymous users according to its added features of user and article rating. Any successful feature are sure to find their way back into MediaWiki.
Tom Haws
You should note that before I left the project, I started this with [[Wikipedia:Baseline revision]]. This was designed to have no noticable disruptionn of the main article (I directly linked to a proposed revision, this was done on a subpage that hangs off the article. The discussion of the revision is done on the talk page.) It was my hope this could allow for a "stamped" version of a FA page that we could proudly state is the most reliable version and guaranteed not to be vandalised.
Regrettably, it looks like my idea has fallen through. I hope that Wikipedia can find a credible alternative.
TBSDY