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

[Bennett Haselton]

At 11:05 AM 3/23/2007 -0500, Sheldon Rampton wrote:
>Ray Saintonge wrote:
>
> > My first impression from your response is that you would end up with
> > something even more complicated than what I would imagine. :-
> > (    While
> > I see the value of having this ones preferences set to have a certain
> > version as preferred, the drive-by viewer just looking for information
> > is not likely to know about this.  He can, however, be guided by
> > whether
> > an article has (in big numbers) a reliability rating of 2.6 or 7.9.
>
>I think user rating of article versions ought to be as simple as
>possible: one-click approval. It ought to be as easy as clicking on
>the "watch this article" tab to add an article to your watchlist.
>This means that all users do is decide yes or no for approval.
>Anything further adds complexity to the system but offers little gain
>in utility.

Also, one reason I was advocating a means for verified experts to sign off 
on the accuracy of an article, was to enable people to cite or reference 
that article, saying that even if Professor X didn't write it, he vouches 
for its authenticity.

If you go with a sliding scale from 1 to 10 instead of a yes/no option, 
then there's some ambiguity in whether you can cite an expert as vouching 
for the correctness of the article.  How high does their rating have to be 
before you can put them down as "vouching" for the article?  7?  10?  I 
have no idea.

         -Bennett