[Wikipedia-l] A quick thought about 1.0

[Jimmy Wales]

Peter Jaros wrote:
> >OK, let's make this quick:
> >What we need is a non-editable subset of wikipedia, correct?
> 
> Hold up.  Do we?  Is this to be a paper or electronic encyclopedia?  Or 
> both?  Or am I talking about two different proposals?  It seems a shame 
> to me to freeze and de-wikify entries if not for the sole purpose of 
> inscribing it on a medium that can't be edited (ie., paper).  I would 
> much prefer a tagging system which allows us to mark entries as 
> complete.  Note that 'complete' is not the same as 'finished'.  No 
> entry should ever be finished.  But some entries have achieved 
> completion, where the need only adjustment; think opposite of stub.  
> Furthermore, these entries rarely devolve from their complete status, 
> though if they did for some reason the tag could be quickly removed 
> (or, preferably, the entry re-completed :) ).

You said a lot in this paragraph, but as far as I can tell I agree
with you on some crucial points.

1.  "freezing" is bad terminology, because it implies some inability
for people to continue editing the article, 

2. instead, "tagging" particular versions as "good enough" is what we
want.  I like the "good enough" terminology rather than either
"complete" or "finished".  Basically a "good enough" article is one
which someone could print on paper and distribute in a bookstore
without feeling too stupid.

-----

Imagine this scenario -- a publisher says to the Wikimedia Foundation,
"We are prepared to distribute your encyclopedia worldwide in
bookstores for 1/10th the price of a new Britannica, and pay royalties
to the foundation to pay for new servers and whatnot, all you have to
do is send us a complete extract of articles that are good enough."

We'd like to be able to do that, without having to laboriously go over
the database _one last time_, because we'd like to already have
flagged some 60,000-100,000 "good enough" articles.

Let's say an article is flagged "good enough".  Then it gets edited.
That edit should, in some cases, not automatically result in the new
version also being tagged "good enough", because it might be an act of
vandalism that takes place just moments before I run the 'extract'
command to send the files to the printer.

On the other hand, if an article is "good enough" and some edits come
in that make it better, obviously we want it to be easy to update so
that the newer version is the "good enough" version.

--Jimbo