[WikiEN-l] Wikipedia: the Journal

[FT2]

Two perspectives on a "WikiJournal": should we compete in something not our
core, and where others may do better? Or should we go ahead anyway?

If we did try, then a WikiJournal would be a classic case where we could do
the job right using present tools, and achieve something that most similar
sites won't do. Try this:



   - Anyone can post up a paper, in usual academic form (ie authors info
   would be required, formal citations, and so on).
   - The draft is held back using Flagged Revisions, similar to Wikinews'
   configuration, at the point of writing.
   - Other users then discuss and critique and identify as a peer review
   process, issues to be addressed (NPOV would probably fail as a criteria
   since many good papers are written from the view of one specific author or
   team; we'd need some more suitable criterion here).
   - When the issues are mostly addressed, a poll (community or some kind of
   "trusted users") takes place to decide whether it passes the peer review
   it's had.
   - If it does, it's posted up as a "beta" version - a paper that is
   believed to meet the appropriate standard and has passed WikiJournal peer
   review, and is promotedon a list of such papers.
   - After a month, a second poll takes place, much shorter, to ask if the
   community still ratifies the paper in light of feedback from the public. if
   so, it's accepted as a paper.
   - Papers are reviewed annually, or upon major new information, so they
   become a living document -- the paper on the higgs boson as it is now, and
   the same paper as it was a year, 2 years ago, showing the advance of
   knowledge and correcting itself as time passes and knowledge develops.

FT2