[WikiEN-l] "the experiment" - did it work?

[Michael Snow]

Ian Woollard wrote:

> I definitely agree, but I think the nupedia experiment tells us that
> formal reviews are bad for the wikipedia though.

Depends what you mean by that. Featured article nominations are formal 
reviews in some sense, or about as formal as one gets on a project whose 
culture trends to the informal. Formal reviews aren't bad per se, but 
Nupedia had a poorly designed workflow. Now that we have the community 
and the tools to produce large amounts of content, it makes sense to try 
to see if we can't adjust the tools to also allow for better review 
processes.

Incidentally, historically speaking your characterization is backwards. 
It's Wikipedia that was the experiment relative to Nupedia, not the 
other way round.

--Michael Snow