[WikiEN-l] purpose served by anonymity / unmoderated edits

[Bennett Haselton]

I'm writing an article (possibly for Slashdot) about the alternative models 

for Citizendium vs. Wikipedia and how they pertain to the Essjay
controversy.  It's not so much about Essjay as about the more general
merits of anonymous / unmoderated edits, versus identity verification and
change moderation, and how Essjay illustrated a flaw in one approach.

The disadvantage of making people register under a presumed real name, much 
less following up and trying to verify their identity and credentials, are 
of course that you will have fewer users that way.  On the other hand, the 
advantage is that you can give articles the stamp of reliability if it's 
been signed off on by, say, a professor whose .edu address has been 
verified.

Could you get the best of both worlds by (a) allowing unverified users to 
build up the meat of an article, but then (b) verifying the credentials of 
certain users (Citizendium calls them "editors"), and having those users 
sign off on the contents of a given article once it's reached a stable 
state?  (And then future edits to that article have to go through them?)

This simple act of an expert "blessing" an article greatly increases its 
value to many people, who would then be able to (a) have more confidence in 
the article's accuracy, and (b) cite it as a source.  When I mentioned this 
on Wikia-L, Laurence Parry pointed out that that's not really what 
Wikipedia is for -- OK, but couldn't it be?  If you can greatly increase an 
article's usefulness with only a small additional amount of effort (the 
time it takes a verified expert to read it and sign off on it), why 
not?  Especially since many people, rightly or wrongly, use Wikipedia for 
that purpose anyway.

Thus I'm arguing for more verification than Wikipedia does, but at the same 
time, less verification than Citizendium is doing.  Citizendium is planning 
on using some combination verification/referral system for new users, but I 
think that's overkill.  You don't necessarily need to know the credentials 
of everyone who contributed to an article, just the people who reviewed it 
at the end and said, "Yes, this is accurate, I'll stake my reputation on 
it."

My question is: If you consider the goals of an online encyclopedia or 
pseudo-encyclopedia (entertainment, accuracy, being used as a citable 
source, etc.), are any of these goals better served by the unmoderated / 
unverified edit model, compared to the model of 
editor-verification-and-locking?

(I know it's tempting to say, "Let's just wait and see which one more users 
prefer", but I don't think that would be a fair way to compare the two 
systems, because there are too many other factors that could tilt the 
balance, independently of which system is actually better -- such as, 
Wikipedia having gotten there first, or having more users.)

	-Bennett

bennett at peacefire.org     http://www.peacefire.org
(425) 497 9002